The Shinobi Without Fear
by pebkac42
Summary: Blinded at a young age when he stumbles across Sasuke's own illicit training session, Naruto develops a sixth radar-like chakra sense with a little less-than-willing help from the Kyuubi. A Naruto with rather a lot more patience, discipline, and willingness to ask others for help will charge forth to change the Shinobi world or die trying.
1. Lost Light

{new _disclaimer_ StandardDisclaimer = If you recognize it, I probably don't own it. _Naruto_ is owned by Kishimoto-sensei, Jump, and probably some other people too. I don't even own any stock in Jump, so I'm not one of them.}

The Shinobi Without Fear

Chapter 1 - Lost Light

 _Fear passes like the wind, arriving unexpectedly and leaving countless changes in its wake._

"...and so we welcome you, our newest students, to the Konohagakure Shinobi Academy in this, our…"

Uchiha Sasuke shut out the endless droning of the Academy's head chuunin instructor and glanced slightly to the side, nudging his ever-present companion. "Keep your face toward the sound, Naruto!" he hissed out softly. "They'll think your attention is wandering and you'll be in trouble before we even start!"

He turned his own gaze back dutifully once he saw his friend's goggles glint in the light again. The glare was annoying, but it let him keep track of Naruto's perpetually short attention span and drag it back on target before it became a problem. Who exactly thought it would be a good idea to make a field full of seven-year-olds stare into the morning sun for their first ever assembly, he didn't know, but for once he was almost envious of Naruto. _He_ wasn't trying desperately not to squint rudely through the entire speech. The thought had his stomach clenched into a knot as soon as it formed, and he only resumed breathing when an elbow plowed silently into his ribs.

"You're thinking about it again. Stop."

~ _Three Years Prior~_

Uzumaki Naruto, four-year-old terror of the Konoha orphanage, ran helter-skelter through the woods in the careless way that all children possess. While not yet what one would call a 'prankster', he delighted in surprising those around him in messy, usually attention-grabbing ways. It didn't endear him much to his caretakers or peers, but it got him more one-on-one time than the quiet kids saw and he'd take it any way he could get it. This time, he'd gone the simplest route by sneaking out of the play-yard when no one was looking. It took longer than most of his surprises to be noticed, but it meant a chase and _then_ a lecture, so it lasted twice as long in the end!

He had already run pretty far, and there was a painful stitch forming on his side, but he had just started to hear the sounds of pursuit. He couldn't stop now! Bursting into a clearing, he risked a short glance over his shoulder to see how close they were. A short, sharp shout of warning from ahead and off to the side brought his head around like a whip. There was a sharp whirring sound in his ear, and then pain.

Incredible pain, like nothing he could have imagined, drew a razor line from temple to temple in an instant. He screamed, fell, tumbled end over end, and stopped in a ragged heap. There was a horrified yell, a cackle of amusement, a shout of warning. He couldn't think, couldn't see past the burning feeling on his face, couldn't do anything but scream and try not to touch his face. They'd stressed that, at the orphanage, don't touch a wound with dirty hands. Don't touch. Don't touch. His face was on fire, everything was wet. So wet. His face was on fire, but everything was so cold.

Pain gave way to blissful stillness, and everything drifted away.

~SWF~

Kurama raged against the bars of his cage, screaming his fury into the uncaring void. The child, the _idiot_ child, had run straight into a brace of shuriken. At first, he was pleased. So short, this time! His freedom imminent once again! He had readied himself, hunched over and with his remaining chakra held tight against the unraveling of the seal. The damnable draw on his power, minuscule as it had been, grew weaker as his pathetic excuse for a container bled out, and he grew more confident still.

When the cold began leeching through the bars, though, and the laughter of the shinigami began to fill his ears, that was when the anger came. Bad enough to be held captive like a common animal. Bad enough to be yoked like one to the pull-cart of the seal, forced to provide even a token of his strength. He could push more than was asked for, erode it with time, and feed his hatred into the whelp until it snapped and released the seal willingly. All of that, he could tolerate.

But to be trapped by its death? To suffer the indignity of dispersion, at best, to die truly alongside it at worst? _Never!_ And so he raged, and roared, and spat defiance at the name of the damnable Yondaime. But he was not desperate, yet. Not truly. And so his chakra did not flow more than the seal demanded. And so a young boy was condemned to darkness forever.

~SWF~

When Naruto awoke again, his world was still dark. He could hear soft beeping from one side, soft breathing from the other, and a distant jumble of noises beyond both. He could feel crisp linens beneath him, a soft blanket above, and tight bandages wrapped around his face and neck. He could smell the sharp tang of disinfectant and bleach, taste a sourness in his mouth. But he could see nothing, and a sharp pain barely dulled by the drugs in him met and countered his attempt at opening his eyes.

His gasp of pain garnered an instant response from the breathing to his side. A sharp intake of breath, a rustle of movement, and cold hands wrapped around his own.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I was training alone, and I thought you were my brother coming to make me stop, and I threw them, and now you...I'm sorry!"

Naruto did not know the voice but it seemed sincere, and they were waiting for him to wake up so whoever it was, they couldn't be a bad person. Bad people laughed when you got hurt, they didn't grab your hand and apologize like that. A smile split the bandages on his face, and he croaked out his best 'everything's okay' voice. "If you're really sorry…" he started, and felt the hands clench on his.

"I am! I really really am!" the voice insisted.

"Then...be my friend?"

"Re-really? Even though I-"

"Mm. Be my friend, and I'll forgive you. But only then."

"OK. Friends, then! Don't move! I'm gonna go get the nurse, okay? They said to tell them when you woke up!"

The hands left, and tiny footsteps pounded out of the room. The distant voices grew louder, but he was already drifting away again. He had a friend! Everything was dark, but that wasn't so bad. The nights were never as bad when he wasn't alone.

~SWF~

Measuring the passage of time from within the seal was difficult. Perception was his to control, but without an external reference point who was to say whether he had waited five minutes, five days, or five years? He could get hints, scattered thoughts and impressions drifting along the backwash of shared chakra, but it was always at its most difficult so soon after a sealing. The coldness, at least, has retreated, the mocking laughter gone once more. The child was no longer dragging him down to death. Best now to see about feeding it a bit more chakra, so that its eyes could repair themselves properly. He pushed lightly against the seal, released some trivial amount more than usual, expecting to feel the draw increase as the body desperately started to pull itself back together as usual.

There was no such draw, the initial surge of chakra more than sufficient to heal what little injury remained. Kurama paused momentarily, confused. The humans were nowhere near skilled enough to repair such delicate tissues the way the regeneration he provided could. Surely they knew his container would inevitably heal. Surely they had not just patched over the damage with their ham-fisted medical techniques. He pushed a bit more chakra against the seal, then pulled it back rapidly, hoping to drag more impressions out of the boy's own.

Rage and fear consumed him once more as he absorbed the echoes. The body considered itself intact, there was hardly any scar tissue to pave over, no missing flesh to regenerate. He pushed harder, pulled again, sought the answer that would damn them both and found it. They had, the cursed humans had tried to repair the child's eyes themselves, and botched the job. He couldn't know whether by design or just by lack of skill, but from what he could sense those eyes would never work again. Better to just gouge them out and let him fix them properly, but they would never allow such a thing.

He raged and he stormed, but eventually the great Kyuubi no Kitsune let slip his perception of time once again and settled down for a good sulk. He would find an answer soon enough. He would _not_ die for this pathetic container's foolishness.

~SWF~

Even with medical jutsu, healing took time. Judicious use of medical techniques kept healing wounds clean of bacteria and other infection vectors, and usually surface damage at least could be closed over rapidly enough that repeated redressing of wounds was only necessary in field hospitals where conditions could not be controlled well. So it was that nearly a week passed before protocol called for removing Naruto's current bandages. He no longer felt any pain, but despite repeated protests to that effect the nurses refused to rush things along.

Sasuke had been a frequent visitor this past week; always at least once daily and twice coming both before and after lunch. They had talked of training and of life in the orphanage compared to the sometimes stifling structure of the Uchiha compound. Both agreed that there was room for improvement in both lifestyles, but Naruto was adamant that the reward of ready attention was more than worth the trade of strict observation and Sasuke was young enough to fully agree. Naruto was hoping he would be able to meet some of Sasuke's family once he got out, but the Uchiha had mumbled about his clan not liking visitors from the rest of the village and he didn't want to push his new friend away so soon and so refrained from asking again.

Such were his thoughts while he suffered the pleasant indignity of being fed. It was nice to be cared for so individually, but the clinical nature of the interaction took a lot of the joy out of it and he couldn't help but feel like a baby the whole time. He was four! He should be feeding himself! His grumbles were cut off when the nurse started none-too-gently wiping his face; tutting to herself until the door to the room slid open.

He recognized the wash of antiseptic smell that heralded his least favorite person, the medi-nin who had ordered him to leave the bandages on his face alone until they were removed for him. He counted the days quickly on his fingers, then brightened. "Ne, ne, medic-san! Are you here to take these rags off? Today's the day, right?"

There was no immediate response that he could make out, but the nurse rapidly finished cleaning up from lunch and then left with a quiet farewell. The room was silent for a moment, then something squeaked on the opposite side of the bed from where the nurse had sat. He felt the cool sensation of medical chakra moving over his face, and squirmed a little at the sensation but made sure not to move his head. That would just make the medic start all over again. The coolness fell away, but before he could open his mouth to ask again the man spoke.

"Naruto-kun...well. It looks like everything is as healed under there as it's going to get, so yes, I'm going to take these off in a moment. However, I have to warn you. Eyes are some of the most difficult things to properly heal, especially when the damage is as severe as what you suffered. We've done everything we could, but I have to warn you that your vision may be severely, permanently impaired."

The medic had to repeat himself a few times, each repetition more simplified than the last, before the reality of what he was told truly began to sink in. He was uncharacteristically silent as the bandages were unwound, and he barely listened to the medic's continued admonitions and suggestions of strategies for managing his new disability. When at last his head was free, he turned towards where he could feel the sunlight pouring through the window. He'd always loved the sun and the trees; he wanted them to be the first things he saw when he finally opened his eyes again.

Sasuke padded quietly down the hospital hallway, the path now more than familiar enough that he simply skipped the nurse station. A medic-nin, looking both frustrated and pained, brushed past him moving in the opposite direction and he twisted his head briefly to follow the motion. There aren't many patients right now, with the village at peace, so the natural conclusion was that the medic had just come from Naruto's room. The frustration made sense, Naruto has been anything but cooperative, but the pain in the medic's bearing made him nervous.

His steps picked up, and he dashed the last few yards only to stop at the still-open door. Peering in cautiously, he slowly moved further into the room and found Naruto sitting up in bed, looking at the window. The bandages are off! He's looking at the window! That must mean - he dashed excitedly into the room and around the end of the bed, only to stumble when he finally saw the face that had haunted his dreams the past week. Naruto was staring fixedly out the window, tears streaming down from cloudy, sightless eyes. Guilt stabbed into his gut anew and stole his breath away. He wanted to say something, anything, but his throat was tight and his own eyes were stinging in sympathy.

Naruto was silent, but past conversations weighed heavy in Sasuke's mind. They had talked about their dreams just the day before, Sasuke to be as good a ninja as his older brother Itachi, and Naruto to become a great ninja that everybody knew and respected. His throat refused to let go of itself, and his hands curled into tight fists around the hem of his shirt. His fault, his friend was going to lose his dream and it's _all his fault_.

Sasuke's head snapped towards the door, and Naruto's followed a beat later as his hands furiously tried to scrub the tears away when a new voice cut quietly into their shared silence.

"Any ninja can grow strong just from training, just from their natural talents. But the greatest of ninja, the ones whose names shake and shape the world, are the ones who have cast aside all limitations. The ones who have succeeded whether others have proclaimed them prodigy, or failure. Remember this, otouto, Naruto-kun. No other defines the potential of a great shinobi than they themselves."

Sasuke stared at Itachi for a long moment, unaware that he had been followed. He hadn't told anyone where he'd been running off to every day for fear of being told he couldn't, but rather than stopping him, taking him home, Itachi-nii was...trying to help? He turned his head toward Naruto, wondering when Itachi-nii had learned who his friend was, and saw Naruto furiously scrubbing the last of his tears away with an overdone sniff that would have sounded absurd in any other context.

"Then….then, if no one else can tell me what kind of ninja I can or can't be...I'm gonna be the greatest ninja ever. No, the Hokage! No...the greatest Hokage ever! Better than jiji, better than Yondaime, better than all of them-ttebayo!"

Sasuke was stunned. It was like a switch had been flipped, and the brightest, most determined smile he'd ever seen was erupting out of Naruto's face. You could barely even see the scars when his eyes wrinkled shut like that, and in that instant, he could almost forget the crippling handicap his friend would be working under. Could almost believe that he'd do it. Well, Sasuke was going to have the Sharingan, right? Then…

"Then I'll see well enough for both of us. And together, we'll be the greatest shinobi in Konoha."

Itachi allowed the briefest secret smile to cross his lips. Perhaps now Sasuke would stop carrying around quite so much guilt. He hadn't been pestered to help his otouto train in days, and it was quite worrisome. If nothing else, the two should be able to keep each other out of trouble for a while.

~SWF~

He had never been known for serenity at any point in his long life, but rarely had Kurama found himself so furious so often in such a short time. Get angry, crush and rend asunder whatever incurred his wrath, then sleep it off. Rinse and repeat as necessary. It was a simple formula and one that he was rather partial to. His continued imprisonment had certainly put a dent in things, but he was ancient and immortal and he could bide his time with the best of them. He simply simmered in his hate and anger, and let his chakra tilt further and further into a corrosive blend of all the negative emotions that plagued his senses.

He had consigned himself to waiting out yet another mortal lifespan, most likely elongated now that his container would have to scrap any plans of a ninja career. All to the better, as it would give him more time to erode the seal unnoticed or better still, convince the child to remove it entirely, freeing him from the trap he had found himself in.

No, that was not good enough for the cursed blonde _idiot child_. Such pathetic words, yet they echoed through the cesspit of its mind and blasted away the cloud of despair. Hope; wretched useless _hope_ had replaced it and they were going to go to their deaths together for it. And all for the words of an _Uchiha_ no less. The child ran headlong into a flight of shuriken _when it could see_. What in the Sage's name was it going to do _now_?

His rage and desperation built, hopelessly entwined, and he railed against the bars of his seal-prison anew. Again, and again, with no regard for reason or sense. If he could just reach far enough, push enough of himself into the child, perhaps he could fix things still. His chakra has always burned at his hosts, clawed at their fragile flesh, and if he could just push enough maybe he could burn its useless eyes out and make it grow new ones.

The Fourth's seal was strong, though, and would not allow so much chakra through yet. What did get through was still much more than the child's far-from-fully-developed chakra pathways could contain, and a brief burst of his chakra blasted out into the room. Dimly he was aware of the panic of his container, awoken in the dead of night by the agonizing sensations. Dimly, he was aware of new presences that rushed into the room, unclear voices that echoed through the twisted corridors of the seal-space. Dimly, yes, but _aware_.

He was more cautious the next time, more deliberate. He paid no mind to the passage of time and devoted all of his attention to the echoes, the impressions fed back past the seal through the connection between his chakra and the child's. Again the blast of chakra, the sudden screaming awareness of his warden, the dim echoes of the room and running, panicked humans. He had not imagined it. He could work with this.

Again, and again, and again, he carefully adjusted how much he pushed each time. It was useless if he pushed too much; the agony and panic of his container tainted everything and washed out the useful information. Unknowingly, each time his chakra forced its way out the child's pathways were stretched and distended, only to heal and settle under the regenerative influence of the chakra which pounded through them.

Eventually, he found balance. Enough pressure to force the child's own chakra out of its body at a steady rate, but not so much that any of his own actually escaped. The deeper mingling of their powers fed back a clearer echo, and the smoother, less corrosive and tangled nature of the child's own chakra provided a better base image beyond that.

It was likely exhausting for his host, to constantly be absorbing and channeling so much of his chakra, but that was of no concern. The child would adapt, was adapting already, and if it had _any_ intelligence at all it would learn to read the echoes the same way he was learning to. And perhaps, _perhaps_ , they would together survive this idiocy.

At least now he knew how much time was passing.

~SWF~

Naruto had thought that nothing would ever hurt more than those shuriken, or scare him more than finding out he was forever blind. He had been so, so wrong. He didn't know what was happening to him, what caused his entire body to burst out in searing flame from the inside, but it made everyone nearby panic and scream at him to stop. Sometimes they shook him or slapped him but all he could do was scream back at them that it wasn't his fault, he wasn't doing anything, it hurt, it hurt, make it stop!

It had come and gone for days and days and in all that time they refused to let anyone who wasn't a medic or ANBU into his room. He only knew about the ANBU because one time when they thought he was asleep he heard one of the nurses asking 'ANBU-san' if they wanted any coffee, but he didn't know if that made things better or worse.

Finally, though, the painful flares had died down. There was a steady warmth, a constant pressure throughout his body but it no longer hurt. It just...was. Like a belly that was just a little too full, or a fire that was just a little too close. Uncomfortable yes, but he could deal with it without screaming and they were slowly acting less scared of him.

There was something else that tickled at the back of his mind, some new awareness that was building, but it was still competing with his other senses. He had already started to notice what he vaguely remembered one of the medics telling him about before all the burning and screaming. His hearing was getting better, his smell and taste and touch too. He was more _aware_ of everything around him, and it was scary not knowing what all the new sounds and smells were, but it was better than not knowing about anything around himself at all.

On the second day after things had calmed down, he got a brief visit from Jiji and Itachi. It was late at night, and he was only a little bit awake, but he caught snippets of their conversation. Something about a seal, and Itachi not being an expert on them, but Jiji mostly just wanted Itachi to look at Naruto's 'chakra' for him and he was trying to keep Naruto's blindness as quiet as he could so he didn't want to involve anyone else yet. He drifted away again before he could hear anything more.

~SWF~

The third time Itachi came to his room Naruto was awake again, though his eyes were closed as was slowly becoming a habit. He hadn't heard or smelled any change, but he found himself aware of the added presence all the same. He'd started to notice it in the last few days; the same feeling of energy that was pushing out of him seemed to bounce off everything around him and come back to caress his skin, changed and reshaped by what it had encountered in the world.

It was vague and blurry and hard to understand, but he could now tell without having to reach out for them where the bed rails were, where the water glass on the side table was. He couldn't always tell when one of the nurses was coming in, not besides hearing them, but every time one of the medic-nins came into the room or even walked by when his door was open he could feel something _else_ that was like his energy but not the same. It disturbed his own, sent ripples through it like what he saw when he kicked rocks into a puddle.

Sasuke, who'd started to be allowed to visit again, was dull but crackly and warm. This new person felt like the same kind of warm, but sharper and stronger and quieter all at the same time, and he almost missed him at first. He hadn't meant to, but he reflexively turned towards the source of the ripples, and they immediately stopped. Now nervous about who was sneaking into his room like that, he dared to pipe up and ask the obvious question.

"Who's there?"

The ripples resumed, slower this time, and they settled down just out of arm's reach. He got a vague impression that they had sat down, on the stool that creaked just so when the medic-nin sat but didn't for this person.

"We were not properly introduced, were we? Sasuke was a bit too distracted. My name is Itachi, his brother. Naruto-kun...how did you know I was in the room?"

"I, um, felt you? It's...weird. Ever since it stopped hurting, I think, I can kinda, dunno, feel things? Like with my hands, but not? And everyone feels a little different but I guess you kinda feel like Sasuke but sharper and quieter?"

"Hm. I will ask Hokage-sama if he has any ideas. For now, do not mention this to anyone else."

Itachi stayed a bit longer but did not have much else to say before he left as quietly as he had arrived, and Naruto resumed exploring his new sense as best he could.

~SWF~

"I cannot speak to the sanctity of the seal, Hokage-sama, but it is clearly the demon's chakra that is the source of Naruto-kun's emissions. It seems the seal connects their chakra, and the demon's is pushing outward enough to force Naruto-kun's own into motion. So far its influence is restricted only to those portions of his chakra network closest to the seal and does not seem to be expanding beyond that point. The seal itself, however, is now in constant view. We will need to await Jiraiya-sama's inspection to learn more."

Itachi paused in his report long enough to confirm that the Sandaime had no questions for him yet, then nodded and continued at a small gesture from his Hokage.

"Naruto-kun reports that after the surges subsided and the steady influx of chakra stopped being painful, he has begun to gain a primitive chakra sense. From what I can see, he is feeling his expelled chakra roll back to himself after imprinting against the world around him. He describes it as being similar to his sense of touch, but it also appears to be sensitive to other sources of chakra. I apparently feel similarly to my otouto, but 'sharper and quieter'. Notably, he was able to detect my presence when I was attempting to remain outside his notice until I suppressed my own chakra."

Sarutobi was silent for an extended period of time, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere behind and above the small Uchiha prodigy. Itachi casually suppressed the urge to shift or look around as he waited for further question or instruction. Some called him a genius, but quietly he believed that no small part of this came from his habit of using every possible opportunity to train even the smallest amount. Shinobi were silent and motionless unless noise or movement were necessary, and he was a genin now. He would wait.

"Thank you, Itachi-kun. Please locate Genin Umino Iruka and ask him to report to me. After that, you may return to your team. What you have seen and learned today remains an S-class secret that should be discussed only with myself or Jiraiya. I trust your continued discretion in this matter. Dismissed."

"Hai, Hokage-sama." Itachi murmured. A quick stop at the Mission Desk should provide him with Umino-san's location, and then he could get back to his training.

~SWF~

Umino Iruka felt his stomach clench as he stepped into the demon child's hospital room. He had already felt the beginnings of the child's chakra when he stepped onto this floor, but the closer he had come the more he began to feel the echoes of _its_ chakra within the outer shell. That _thing_ had killed his parents and left him orphaned, and now he was supposed to share some of the secrets of _his father's_ technique with its container? His respect for his Hokage had never been so low, but at least he was going to have his memories sealed afterward so he wouldn't have to think about it every day.

Fists clenched, he stepped into the room and marched to its bedside, all but throwing himself into the chair next to its bed. It certainly didn't _look_ injured, thin hospital gown and sheets be damned. And it may have been tiny and helpless in appearance, but the echo of malice and power rolling out of its body was enough to prove that lie, even to a sensor ability as basic as his own. He seethed and clenched his teeth against the rising bile in his throat, and crossed his arms so that he wouldn't be tempted to wring the thing's neck. He would teach it, yes, but only-

His breath caught when the child rolled over and sat up, blinking a few times blearily before its eyes slid slowly shut again. A scar, not dissimilar to the one that crossed his own nose if far thinner, ran across the child's face. Directly over its eyes, which in the moment he had seen them seemed clouded and misshapen. Unbidden, the words of the Hokage echoed through his mind and he felt the bile rising further, this time for an entirely different reason.

" _He has suffered terribly, Iruka-kun. I am only asking this of you because he has already started to develop a technique not dissimilar to that of your family, and if he is to survive and fulfill his dream of becoming the ninja I know he can become he will need guidance. I do not ask you to share the greatest secrets of your father's teachings, just enough that he can learn the rest for himself with time."_

The demon...no. The child was blinded, and judging by the fresh scar and their current location it was a recent event. He was the scroll, not the kunai, and no child deserved that kind of pain. Then the child's face lit up with a smile as bright as the sun, and it- _he_ began a chattering, manic self-introduction. Despite himself, Iruka felt the tension leave his shoulders and his gut settled down.

"My name is Umino Iruka. I am a Genin, and the Hokage has asked me to help you learn to interpret what you are feeling from your chakra…"

Much later, Iruka blinked as he was leaving the hospital to go meet up with his sensei and teammates. A blonde ANBU was ruffling his hair, but before he could ask why, the shinobi vanished in a soft swirl of leaves. He must have hit his head harder than he thought when Uchiha-san surprised him on the training ground this morning; he couldn't seem to remember anything between that moment and now. With a shrug, he ran off into the fading light to find out what he had missed that day.

~Present Day~

Sasuke was fairly certain he hadn't ever really stopped thinking about those weeks in the past three years. When Naruto had finally been released from the hospital and Sasuke had snuck into the orphanage to visit him, he had been furious to see the other kids bullying him about his new disability and the staff doing nothing to help. He'd run straight home and demanded his mother do something about it. Childish yes, but, well. He was four. It wasn't like he could solve the problem himself.

At first, when he'd finally told his mother who this mysterious friend of his was, he'd been afraid she was angry at _him_. It turned out she was angry at the _Hokage_ and hadn't _that_ been a scary conversation!

That talk paled in comparison to when the three of them snuck over to the orphanage so the Hokage could see for himself. The next thing Sasuke knew, ANBU were swarming the place like ants after their hill had been kicked and then they were back in the Hokage's office, now with Naruto virtually glued to his side. His mother all but begged the Hokage to let them take in Naruto, something about it being what 'she' would have wanted, and then he and Naruto were excused while the adults finished their talk. Kaa-chan didn't get her way, not completely, but Naruto was moved to an apartment building near the Uchiha compound. A few ANBU minders would make sure he didn't get into too much trouble by himself, and Kaa-chan would quietly make sure he always had home-cooked meals for the ANBU or Sasuke himself to bring over.

The friendship he had agreed to out of guilt and grief blossomed into something more genuine over the months that followed as he helped Naruto regain a semblance of normalcy in his life. Under the watchful eyes of ANBU, and when she could sneak over his mother, he had helped the blonde menace to learn manners, discipline, and most important, how to navigate in a world without light.

His father, it was agreed by all, was not to know. Chichiue would see it as a waste of time, and though he didn't understand at the time, the village was very suspicious of any interaction between the Uchiha clan and the Uzumaki. Thankfully the apartment building itself was largely filled by younger civilians who were loosely allied with the Uchiha clan economically, and they turned a blind eye.

The first few months had been the hardest. Naruto had had to learn to walk around with a padded stick held out in front of himself vertically. At first, he had tried to hold it straight out ahead but kept either poking himself in the stomach when it ran into something or bashing some other part of himself into surfaces that the pole didn't intercept. When he finally managed to get enough control over whatever weird sense it was that he was learning and could ditch the stick, Naruto had still been scared to go out in public. The experience with the bullies and staff at the orphanage had taught him quickly that people knowing about his eyes was inviting trouble.

For a few months they played on the roof of Naruto's building whenever they needed more space than the apartment had to offer but eventually, an off-hand comment to his mother brought up a solution. Apparently, he'd had a cousin once who wore goggles to protect his eyes until the Sharingan developed. While those were too transparent for this purpose, some shopping around in the district resulted in a set of green goggles with individual lenses. A little extra bargaining got them tinted, so even in bright light you couldn't see what was behind them, and soon Naruto could be found traipsing carefully around the village again at last.

By then a year had already passed, and Sasuke had been itching to start training again. Now that Naruto could 'see' more than a few feet away at a time, they started meeting in the same clearing in the woods where they had first encountered one another. It took several weeks before Naruto stopped flinching at the sound of flying shuriken, and it was nearly another year before he could 'see' far enough to hit things accurately without Sasuke hitting it first to give him an audio target. Slowly but surely, they built up their skills. There was no question that Sasuke could have learned faster on his own, but there was also no question of leaving Naruto behind. He had made a promise to be his friend's eyes.

The last year had gone quickly as well. For all that Naruto could navigate passably now, and was slowly pushing his 'sight' out further and further, it was still no substitute for real vision in a lot of important ways. His friend had already been lagging behind in learning to read before everything went wrong, but without being able to actually see the text it was proving all but impossible.

They had found enough woodcut texts that Naruto could trace with his fingers that he wasn't completely illiterate, and Tora had helped Naruto learn how to replicate the characters with a pencil, but there was no way he was going to be able to make it through the academy at this rate. Blind shinobi were not unheard of, it was amazing what you could overcome with training and chakra, but Konoha's Academy was heavily reliant on book-learning and written tests. And with the attitude of most of Konoha already against Naruto, for reasons no-one was ever willing or able to explain to the two, it wasn't like they'd be able to get him apprenticed to a Jounin-sensei directly.

In the end, Sasuke had pleaded with Itachi to intervene on their behalf to the Hokage. The recently-promoted ANBU helped arrange things to ensure that the two would be paired in all their classes until graduation; this would allow Sasuke to quietly read any required texts aloud to the blonde until they figured out a permanent solution. It would be tricky, especially to make sure none of the teachers thought they were cheating, but it was a start.

"And so, without further ado, let's head inside and start you on this great path to becoming fine Konoha Shinobi!"

Drawn out of his musings more by the abrupt end of the speech than by Naruto's increasingly fierce elbow, Sasuke shoved back to get a little breathing room with a smile. He'd stop thinking about it, as asked. For at least a few hours. Quietly aiming Naruto in the right direction for the doors, as they were a little further away than his friend's fifteen or so meter sight range, he headed inside to properly follow in his brother's footsteps at last.

 _A/N: So this whole thing has come about as a response to a challenge listed on Leaf Ranger's profile from Bill Alain, "The Ninja Without Fear". As I hope is obvious by now, it's a Daredevil twist on the Naruto story. I've been wanting to write a Naruto fic for a while, but my brain was just continually spamming Peggy Sue fic concepts and as much as I enjoy them I wanted to try something different, especially as I have two Peggy Sue fics already on the back burner while I wait for the proverbial muse to look that way again (Harry Potter and One Piece, for those who are curious.) While Sasuke was the primary POV for this chapter, that will not be the case moving forward. In many ways, his is the character that was changed the most by the Incident, so I wanted to make sure I spent enough time in his head for everyone, myself included, to understand the differences. We'll be pretty firmly in Naruto's head starting next chapter._

 _Per the original challenge request, this will be a NaruHina fic, although the pairing itself will not be the focus of the story and it won't really be a thing until post-time skip anyways (assuming I don't burn out before I reach that point.) Reviews, no matter how impassioned, will change neither the pairing nor the timing. I don't have an OTP myself, so I'm happy to write it as the challenge requested, and I'm not comfortable writing anything besides puppy love between 13-year-olds. Not gonna grief anyone who does, it's just not my thing. Sorry!_

 _I'm sure you've already noticed the smattering of Japanese sprinkled throughout the story. I prefer the 'sound' of Japanese for jutsus, honorifics, and even the dreaded verbal tics. (Believe it, ne?) This also means I'll be using the Japanese order for person names, and occasionally butchering the language as needed for anything new I'm adding to any given shinobi's repertoire. For reading purposes, pretend that everything the characters are saying is in Japanese, I'm just 'translating' most of it for all of our sakes. I'm pretty comfortable with the language myself, but if people are having a hard time let me know and I can at least start including some short translation entries in the A/Ns._

 _Throughout the story, you may recognize some concepts that you've seen in other stories. I've read...yikes, probably a couple million words of fanfic in various fandoms in the past year or two since I first started reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" towards the end of its run. At this point, it's all kludged together in my head and I can't separate it without actually going back and reading the story where I first saw it again. I'm doing that with the original manga as I go here so that I don't destroy canon more than I_ mean _to, but I can't possibly do that with all the fics I've read and still have time to write. Please think of this as more of an homage than any attempt at uncredited idea theft. If it's in my story, it's because I really damn well liked it and couldn't come up with anything better to use myself. When I'm aware I'm doing it, I'll make sure to credit the original idea in my notes. If you think I've missed a reference, please let me know in a review. If I've read the story you think it came from, I'll make sure to update the relevant chapter._

 _As for canon itself? I draw almost exclusively from the manga. I stopped watching the anime shortly after the "Sasuke Retrieval" arc when it went to 99% filler, and never really got back into it when Shippuden rolled around. I'll borrow things from the anime/movies here and there, but please don't come in flaming about how "this or that was explained differently, didn't you watch that episode?". Canon is a guideline anyway more so than any sort of rulebook for my purposes, even if this train will be making a lot of stops at the various stations of the canon. (Curse you for your blessings, TV Tropes.) That said...a lot of the stupid that pops up in a Fridge Logic sense, such as "why was Naruto never adopted, etc" is an artifact of how the story evolved from its original one-shot into the epic that we all love enough to keep reading other variations of it long, long after that first volume ever came out. I'm not interested in retroactively solving all those plot holes myself, so unless I need to do so for my story, you can fill those gaps yourselves the same way we all did when the original came out…(reader omake, anyone? :P)_

 _As of this writing, I don't have a beta. If anyone is interested in stepping into that role, PM me and we'll talk. As an untested writer, I'm not going to demand a beta with reams of experience, but I'm pretty solid on basic spelling and grammar checking so I'm more interested in someone who can help spot any gaping plot holes in time for me to pave over them. Also, I would not be averse to help with dialogue. I have...no practical experience with how four-year-olds actually talk, and I feel like Naruto is_ way _too articulate in these early scenes, but I have no idea how to fix it. To say nothing of the potential OOC nature of anything that comes out of anyone's mouth at this stage. But as we go, hopefully, I'll get comfortable with these characters fast enough that you, my wonderful readers, can just tough it out with me._

 _If you've come this far and you're still reading, I hope you've enjoyed the start and will stick around for a while. This A/N is already somewhere around a thousand words, so it's time to shut up and start writing the next chapter. Thanks, and enjoy the ride!_

 _-Pebkac42_

 _PS: My shinobi wear boots because I don't have a thing for writing about toes the way Kishimoto-sensei does about drawing them. Unless I specifically say otherwise, assume any shinobi you read in this tale is wearing close-toed footwear of some sort._

 _[Edited 1/23/17_

 _Grammar Edit: Corrected tenses, broke up overly long paragraphs and sentences, and shuffled a few words around for comprehensibility._

 _Content Edit: Corrected references to chakra coils in Kurama segment; replaced with chakra pathways. Coils surround chakra-producing organs and collect physical/spiritual energy. Pathways allow for the resulting chakra to be moved around the body. Or so I paraphrase from el wiki. If it ever becomes really important we'll cover it in-story; probably while discussing the Byakugan and what it sees.]_


	2. Lost Uchiha

{include StandardDisclaimer}

The Shinobi Without Fear

Chapter 2 - Lost Uchiha

 _Fear is the mind-killer._

The first year at the Academy had been _almost_ blissfully uneventful for Naruto. There had been a number of hiccups along the way, most notably that their sensei clearly had it out for him and was not shy about demonstrating this fact. Really, all of the hiccups came back to that one issue in some way or another. When Sasuke would try to whisper the contents of a book or scroll to him, it would be Naruto that would get in trouble instead. A few times he'd even been tossed out of the classroom to stand in the hallway for 'being disruptive', but since the door was always left open so that he could be 'appropriately monitored' he never actually missed much.

He had quickly become adept at 'looking' in a direction other than forward; as long as it was within 20 meters of his position and there was a physical path for his chakra to move through and back he could perceive it reasonably clearly. Useless for reading the board, but after the first time he'd been kicked out like that Sasuke had had the idea of continuing to read aloud anyways. It occasionally would get the Uchiha scolded, because it was seen as a terrible liability for a ninja to always read aloud, but since Naruto was almost always able to pick out the whisper even from the hall Sasuke considered it worth the price.

Toward the end of the year, he'd started working on refining his chakra control. A few months after admission, a series of lessons on reaching their chakra and starting to connect with it had been given to all of the non-clan students, himself included. It took nearly six months before the majority of students had completed the process. It was then that the most elementary chakra control exercises had been taught. While Naruto found them all excruciatingly difficult, and the noise of all those chakra signatures erupting into the room had given him a terrible headache the first few times, he had very quickly learned a few new things.

First of all, he could use other people's chakra to get a picture of the world too, not just his own. As long as the person was not actively controlling it and using it for their own purposes it was just so much free-floating energy, and it carried the same sort of 'picture' to his skin that his own did. Secondly, if he actually controlled his own chakra instead of just letting it flow out of him like normal, he could focus his attention and get a significantly clearer image of whatever he was 'looking' at. It was only in bits and glimmers so far, but he had finally managed to actually make out the individual fingers of his hand for the first time in years. Which was good, because no matter how close he and Sasuke were it had felt goofy when his friend had to shape his hands into a proper Ram seal after that first control class.

He was even hopeful that if he could focus closely enough, he might be able to make out ink on pages or chalk on the board some day. He had felt both, very closely, and he could _almost_ feel the texture differences. It was easier with books, because the printing press pushed in the page just a tiny bit when they stamped the symbols in, but then they did it again on the other side so sometimes he got confused.

Scrolls, however, were currently a lost cause. There was not enough difference between empty paper and paper that had ink infused into it for him to feel. And either way, it wouldn't be much longer before his callouses were too thick to feel details like that anyways, and it was more important to be able to throw kunai and shuriken than it was to be able to read with his fingers. So he spent every free moment that he could with a leaf plastered to his forehead, its stem tied to his goggles with a thin piece of string so that when he inevitably launched it off he didn't have to hunt it back down.

Currently, he and Sasuke were competing on the roof of his apartment building to see who could hold said leaf in place the longest. They'd had a long evening of working on homework for the academy, with Sasuke's patience being tried by having to watch Naruto's writing to make sure it stayed legible, and Naruto's patience being tried by having to stay indoors for so long on such a nice day. Ever since he'd been given his goggles and didn't feel afraid of being seen any more, he'd regained his love of the sun and the wind and always tried to find every excuse he could to experience both directly. It was getting late, so they were planning on going their separate ways soon, but they'd both had a leaf in place for almost an hour and neither wanted to give up. Even if Naruto was sweating buckets from concentrating so hard, and Sasuke was starting to get tired from all the chakra he'd gone through that day.

When the wind shifted unexpectedly and brought a metallic scent that he was all too familiar with, along with an uneasy silence where he would normally expect the quiet bustle of families settling in for the night, Naruto's control finally slipped. The leaf blasted off his forehead, swung on its string, and splatted right onto his nose. The unexpected sensation made him sneeze, which in turn startled Sasuke into launching his own leaf straight onto Naruto's forehead. Both stared at each other for a brief moment, before Naruto stuck his tongue out at Sasuke and quickly grabbed the leaf with his chakra before it could fall away. It lasted all of five seconds this time before Sasuke started to laugh at the absurdity, and Naruto's smile died as he remembered why he'd gotten distracted in the first place.

"Ne, Sasuke...I've got a weird feeling. I think I can smell blood coming from that way, and it's awfully quiet too for this time of night." He pointed off to the side, into the wind, and sensed Sasuke stiffen in concern as soon as his friend saw where he was pointing.

"Hey, don't joke around like that. I know your sense of direction is bad, but that's the Uchiha district you're pointing at right now. Why would you smell blood from my clan? And of course it's quiet, most of us are ninja." Sasuke turned his head, looking warily towards his clan district a few blocks away. Naruto had no sense of direction up here; he was only able to navigate at street level with his relatively compact zone of awareness, so Sasuke was sure he hadn't known what he was pointing at. "Where are all the lights? It's already dark out, there should be lights on in those houses…."

Naruto turned in the same direction. It didn't change his perception any longer but it helped let other people know that he was paying attention. Across from him Sasuke was slowly climbing to his feet, his chakra becoming nervous and agitated where it had been calm and focused only moments ago. They both turned towards each other, then nodded and darted for the stairwell.

Naruto fell back a few steps as they burst out of the building's back exit, unfamiliar with the path to his friend's house as Mikoto-basan had gently discouraged him from visiting in the past to 'avoid trouble'. He was getting more worried as they got closer, the tang of iron clung in his nose and his chakra cloud barely kept pace at their dead sprint.

They burst through the compound gates, the narrow opening reducing his visibility to a funnel for a few precious seconds, and he tripped on something soft but unyielding as he blasted through. He swore softly as he rolled, dizzy and lost for a precious few seconds longer, and noticed that instead of running steps he now heard ragged, panicked breathing from around where he had lost track of Sasuke. He gathered his awareness back together, casting about until he had found the familiar chakra of his friend huddled over something that screamed wrong to his senses. It had the shape of a person, but there was no chakra, not even the wisps that surrounded civilians like Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-chan. Realization hit only moments later and stole the breath from his lungs.

He watched, momentarily paralyzed, as Sasuke tore off deeper into the district with a wordless scream of agony. The other boy was nearly out of range by the time he scrambled to his feet to chase after him, and it was only the total silence of the compound that prevented him from losing Sasuke completely. As it was he was utterly lost by the time the sound of Sasuke's footfalls changed from the thud of dirt to the hollow claps of a wooden floor. Naruto skidded to a stop on the street and stretched his senses to find which house held his friend. The scream that erupted from the largest of them gave him his target, and he raced in.

Sasuke was collapsed on the floor, Mikoto-basan in front of him and a man Naruto assumed was Sasuke's father Fugaku-san next to her. Beyond them all, liquid dripping from the blade in his hand, was…"Itachi-nii-san? What...what are you...?"

"Naruto-kun. I had not expected to see you again."

Naruto felt Itachi's chakra shift, reach out to his own, and try to wrap around it somehow only to collapse an instant later. For a brief moment, he had thought he was starting to see, really see something again for the first time in years, but it had all been backwards somehow and then it was gone again. Itachi had always been distant with him, but he still thought of the older teen as a brother in many ways for how he had looked out for him after the Incident, and given him the words that restored his purpose and his dreams.

"I...what was that, Itachi-nii-san? Did...did you do all of this? What did you do to Sasuke? What did you do to Sasuke?!" Naruto's voice was a scream by the end, as his friend still had not stirred from where he had fallen before Naruto arrived. Itachi's only response was to fling the liquid - blood, it must have been blood - from his sword and casually sheath it, before stepping over the bodies of his parents and toward Naruto, Sasuke, and the door that lay beyond them. A rage unlike anything Naruto had ever felt roared through him.

 _ **Uchiha**_.

He didn't know why the name was suddenly like a foul taste in his mouth, why his whole body felt like it was on fire. His chakra was wild and out of control and he could barely make out anything around him save for Itachi. Itachi, who was like a cold razor striding through the storm. Itachi, who _wasn't even looking at him_. His fist was in the older teen's gut before Naruto realized he was moving. Something shifted in Itachi's chakra but Naruto ignored it and swung the other fist towards Itachi's face as he bent over ever so slightly in surprise. It never reached. Itachi moved, faster than his senses could track. There was an impact against his neck, and everything faded out in an instant.

~SWF~

Naruto did not dislike many things. At the very top of that short list, though, was waking up in the Hospital. It was not a common occurrence, but it always meant something had gone terribly wrong and he always had to waste several minutes just putting together the end of his memories to determine why he was there. When it came to him, he rolled to his feet in a panic. Sasuke wasn't in the same room, and he needed to know that his friend was alive.

He felt bone-weary, and trying to bring up his chakra was harder than it had ever been, but he had to push, had to fling his senses out. Even if he couldn't actually 'see' anything with all his chakra spread that far out, he should at least be able to- there! Sasuke's familiar chakra was just down the hall. Sprinting was beyond him at the time, but he managed a staggering run somehow. From the lack of other chakra signatures in the hallway, and the fact that he made it there unaccosted, some small part of him made the assumption that it was still night.

"Sasuke!" He wanted to say more, beg him to be awake and to talk to him, but the thought of asking 'Are you okay?' after what they had experienced kept his jaw glued shut after that first outcry. He settled for making his way over to Sasuke's bedside and collapsing into the chair there. His friend had not yet responded, but he could feel the other boy's chakra shift in agitation and pain. It would have to be enough for now, to know that they were both alive. He curled up in the chair and kept a silent vigil for as long as he could before exhaustion claimed him once again.

It was nearly a week before Sasuke finally awoke. Naruto had been herded back to his own room three times before the nurses gave up and told him he could stay as long as he didn't cause any trouble. Hokage-jiji had been by to check on them both, and told Naruto they would need to speak about what had happened later, but that it could wait until Sasuke had woken up first. He had also excused both of them from the Academy temporarily; they would discuss their return after both boys had recovered. Eventually, they had forced him to go home but he had come running when Inu-san told him Sasuke was awake and wanted to see him.

"Naruto...you're really...I had worried he'd killed you, too…" Sasuke's voice hitched, and Naruto's hands gripped the bed rails until his knuckles were white before Sasuke had finished speaking. "He...that man _killed_ all of them. To _test himself_ , he said. I- I have to- to chase him down. To kill him, for all of us. I know I promised that I would help you become Hokage, to be your eyes, but I- I have to do this first."

Naruto just nodded, at first. He had had a lot of time to think about what had happened that night, and the way Itachi's chakra had shifted was gnawing at him. When he had surprised the teen with that punch, the tight control Itachi always held shattered for a brief moment. Naruto had never felt chakra that was in so much pain before, and he knew he hadn't punched hard enough to explain that feeling. He didn't know why Sasuke thought Itachi was testing himself, but that...that couldn't be right.

"I- I'll help you. We'll get stronger, together like always, and we'll catch him. I can't- I can't be a great Hokage if I just let something like this happen, and don't do anything about it." He could feel Sasuke's chakra settle, and could almost make out some of the tension leaving his friend's body, but he could also feel his throat closing over the words he knew he still had to say. His hands gripped the railing until they hurt more than his throat, and he could croak out the rest. "But...I won't help you just kill him. We're going to capture him, and haul his traitor ass back, and he will stand in front of the Hokage and tell him _why_ before anything else. He'll tell us _all_ why."

Sasuke's chakra surged, and twisted, and then closed itself off from him in a way he'd never felt before. Before he could open his mouth again, words he never wanted to hear grated out of Sasuke in a tone filled with anger and hurt and betrayal.

"Get. Out. If you...if you can't stomach what needs to happen, if you can't...Get out."

Naruto flinched back as though struck. "Sasuke, I-"

"GET OUT!" The words came out in a scream and turned quickly into sobbing as the Uchiha rolled to face away from him, curling up on himself.

He wasn't able to form words again before a nurse had come in and bodily dragged him out, nearly hurling him down the hallway and informing him his visiting rights were revoked with an almost satisfied smirk in her tone. It would be the last time Sasuke would speak more than four words to him for several years.

~SWF~

Without the 'crutch' of Sasuke reading the texts to him in class, Naruto fell rapidly behind. Listening attentively whether from the hallway or the classroom only got him so far, and none of the other children would have anything to do with helping the person the Last Uchiha so openly scorned. His chakra sense evolved rapidly out of sheer desperate need, but reading remained elusive and his test scores plummeted. With every failure Sasuke's disdain grew, and by the end of that first year the distance seemed insurmountable.

If he ever wanted his friend back, he would have to prove that he could keep up on his own.

~SWF~

In another reality, Hyuuga Hinata first met Naruto on the entrance day of the Academy, when he drove off older bullies frustrated with her cousin's Hyuuga elitism. In this reality, Naruto took a very different path to the academy, and never even knew the event had happened. While she was rescued by her guardian Kō before any serious physical harm could occur, it further damaged an already fragile self-esteem. Silent and withdrawn, she interacted with her peers no more than strictly necessary and watched them all in constant fear of attack.

It was this heightened awareness and mild paranoia, ironically, that would eventually lead her out of her own personal darkness. She had noticed over the past two years since they all enrolled in the Academy that in every spar Uzumaki Naruto participated in, he was never caught off-guard by his opponent's attacks unless they completely overwhelmed him. Even when they got perfectly behind him, in a spot that any other Academy trainee would be helpless to defend from, he would manage to duck, dodge, turn, or otherwise avoid the blow that he should not possibly have seen. Combined with the darkened goggles that kept everyone from seeing his eyes, and the way everyone shunned him, there was only one logical conclusion to draw.

Uzumaki Naruto had somehow acquired the Byakugan, her family's precious dojutsu. Tried and failed to get the at-the-time more approachable Uchiha to help him control it; and when that failed sought to master his stolen power unaided. If she could prove it, it might be her best chance to regain her standing in the eyes of her clan. She just had to catch him without those Kami-damned goggles on.

She took to following him after class let out for the day, but he was maddeningly annoying to tail discreetly. Not only did she have to stay out of the slowly-expanding range of his Byakugan (which he never seemed to turn off and how did he have the chakra to manage that feat at their age?), but he would take the most nonsensical routes through the village even when she was certain he'd never spotted her. She would often get lost following him through back alleys and down side-streets, only to arrive in a familiar location bare minutes later. Usually from the opposite direction she would have expected given the last landmark she had recognized.

If she wasn't so desperate to remain unseen, not only by Naruto but also by anyone who might take offense to such an uncouth act as her stalk- er, _tracking_ her fellow cadet, she would have screamed.

Nearly a month of frustration later, Hinata managed to follow him all the way out of Konoha's suburban center and into the copious woods contained by the village walls. It wasn't exactly a proper shinobi training field he'd gone to, but then practicing with a secret bloodline stolen from your own village wasn't proper shinobi behavior to begin with. Unable to approach further without revealing herself, she instead took cover in the heavy undergrowth and activated her Byakugan. It took several precious moments to focus and direct her gaze before she had spotted Naruto, but shockingly he was no longer alone! He was standing near and talking animatedly at Sasuke! Was their falling out all a ruse? A secret, to hide the training in dojutsu use by making it seem like they couldn't stand one another?

A few moments later she decided that even if that was true, the Uchiha was clearly a terrible teacher. He just kept standing in the same spot facing mostly away from Naruto, throwing a mix of kunai and shuriken at the nearby set of trees without speaking. Naruto seemed to be growing increasingly agitated before he finally drew out his own shuriken and snapped them towards Sasuke's targets. No, he wasn't aiming at the trees - each shuriken intercepted one of the Uchiha's mid-flight, scattering them off course! Three times it happened, Naruto getting louder each time even if she still couldn't understand them at that distance before the other boy whirled around and tried to bury a foot in Naruto's suddenly grinning face before he could react.

Instead, Naruto demonstrated the same preternatural awareness that had drawn her attention in the first place. His arms snapped into a textbook cross-arm block from their extended throwing positions to intercept Sasuke's kick. In turn, he quickly grasped the offending ankle and yanked, his free arm snapping out to counter. A quick twist took the Uchiha airborne, his second leg shoving Naruto's fist off-course on its way to the blonde's chest, and Naruto released him to dodge.

The swift exchange that followed was difficult for Hinata to follow at the extreme edges of her vision. Convinced that she was finally going to get the truth she had been chasing she began to creep forward through the bushes, her movements timed to match each exchange of blows by the boys. She had never actually seen them go up against each other at the academy, so she also took the opportunity to observe their fight as she approached.

Naruto's style seemed to be based on evading blows with careful precision, moving or blocking only as much as needed to prevent a clean hit. Sasuke, on the other hand, tried to anticipate his opponent's movements and place a fist or foot in the place they were moving to before they got there. Combined this had the effect of the entire fight seeming more like a choreographed display of kata, smooth motions that flowed from one moment to the next with careful timing. Still, they were trainees, not even genin, and neither was yet truly proficient with their own styles. Naruto would misjudge Sasuke's reach, or the latter would mistime the former, and from these accidents came the only meaningful damage they dealt to each other.

Barely a few minutes into what she suspected was much closer to a spar than the fight it first appeared to be, Hinata got her wish. Naruto failed to lean fully out of the way of a backhand aimed for his temple, and Sasuke's trailing fist connected cleanly with his goggles. There was a brief crack of glass, the snap of leather, and a short, sharp cry of either surprise or pain from Naruto as they flew off his face into the bushes next to Hinata. A short growl came from the blonde, and he launched himself into the opening left by Sasuke's now over-extended arm.

Hinata took that moment to snag the goggles and drag them closer to herself, glancing to their interior. Her train of thought abruptly collapsed for a moment, and she dropped her Byakugan to make sure she was not imagining things through the strange sight it offered. The lenses of Naruto's goggles were not merely darkened, they were entirely blacked out and let no light through at all. For him to be seeing out of them in class, he'd need to be using his stolen Byakugan at all times.

Bad enough her thought that he could maintain the dojutsu throughout most of an afternoon's pursuit, but to just casually utilize it throughout an entire day at the Academy? Was it some sort of training? A stamina exercise? She had been taught that forcing oneself to use the Byakugan past comfort would lead to eyestrain and perhaps even blindness. The eyes of a Hyuuga were beyond precious, never to be risked, and not to be pushed beyond their limits. Surely that was just as true, if not more so, for Naruto's illicit pair?

She reactivated her eyes and turned back to the fight, this time paying close attention to Naruto's face to the exclusion of everything else. With the goggles gone, she could finally see...his...eyelids? They were closed! Not forcefully as though Sasuke had done something to make him protect his vision, or slackly as though he was unconscious on his feet, but as though he just held them closed as a matter of course. And around them, the skin was smooth and flat. A small abrasion was visible where the goggles had been ripped away, but missing were the telltale bulges of veins and arteries that surrounded a Byakugan in use. Some of the most advanced users of the kekkai genkai, like her father, could control their chakra use to the point where there were minimal visible changes, but for a child of his age? Unheard of!

It slowly dawned on Hinata that she had missed another, perhaps much more sensible and obvious, explanation for Naruto's odd behavior. He didn't have special eyes, stolen either by birth or deed from her family. His eyes (if he even had them under those closed lids!) were instead useless. It seemed impossible from a civilian's point of view, but if you replaced the theory that Naruto could see in his 'blind spot' with the theory that Naruto had found a way to get around everything being a 'blind spot'...

Naruto's goggles dropped out of Hinata's suddenly limp hands. The boy she had suspected such an awful thing of, had declared in her mind to be the worst kind of intra-village thief, was instead laboring under an incredible handicap. She was wrenched out of her sudden introspection by her nascent instincts, diving out of the bushes in a well practiced roll to avoid the kunai that had been launched straight at her.

Belatedly, she realized that startling two shinobi-in-training with the unexpected crash of the goggles landing again on the ground was an utterly terrible way to reveal her presence. She stood up as slowly and non-aggressively as she could, although her hands quickly drifted from a semi-raised position near her shoulders to just in front of her body, the forefinger of each pressing into the other self-consciously. "A-ano, I'm sorry, I-"

"Hi-Hinata-chan? What are you doing here?" Naruto seemed, if anything, more embarrassed than she herself felt. He was alternating between looking towards her and trying to keep his face turned away, and almost seemed to be fighting with himself as to whether or not to open his eyes. They fluttered open for a brief moment before they slammed forcefully shut and he turned his whole body away. It had only been a moment, but for someone who relied on their eyes as a central component of their budding shinobi art it was more than enough.

"Naruto-kun! Your- your eyes!" The shock at what she had seen in that brief glimpse was enough to blast past her normal reticence, even if a small stutter remained. Before she could say anything more, however, she found her vision filled rapidly by Sasuke rather forcefully entering her personal space.

"Not a word, Hyuuga. Not to anyone, not about this. Forget what you saw today and walk away."

It was more words than she had heard the dour boy put together in over a year. From the muffled sound she heard from behind him, she assumed the same held true for Naruto. She wanted to say something, anything, to promise to keep what was apparently a closely-held secret so opposite the one she had come here to uncover. She couldn't seem to speak past the lump in her throat, let alone the discomfort of having a near-stranger so close, but Sasuke seemed to take her silence as a tacit acceptance of his demand. With a monosyllabic grunt much more in tune with her expectations, he shouldered none-too-gently past her to retrieve the goggles she had dropped, then stormed off towards town.

"Come, Naruto. We need to repair these."

The blonde stalled briefly, his face turning slightly between the two other children without ever quite reaching either and his expression torn. Finally, he muttered something between a thank-you and an apology and darted after the Uchiha without speaking further.

Hinata remained where she was for nearly ten minutes before she began to make her slow way home. Her world had been neatly up-ended; a boy that her cousin (or nearly anyone else in the village, really) would have dismissed in an instant as being _fated_ never to become a ninja with his handicap was instead someone apparently on near-parity with one of the strongest academy students. In practical skills, at any rate. Naruto's written scores were the stuff of legend, or perhaps infamy was more appropriate. More, she could not imagine this being the result of any natural-born talent. Hinata was not unaware that there were ninja who could fight blind, or that had overcome vision lost through poison or injury; every one of those was a story written in hard work, effort, and sheer determination not to be put out of the fight while they could still hold a kunai and stand upright.

Naruto was working just as hard as any of them, just for the chance to stand beside them. Maybe, she could work harder too. She had no natural talent, nothing beyond the incredible gift of the Byakugan itself and even that paled next to her cousin and sister. Ask anyone in her family, main or branch, and they would tell her that nothing could overcome this weakness. After all, it had been explained to her. Repeatedly. At great length and with ample physical demonstration. Yet, maybe, if she trained harder, studied longer, chased the footsteps of someone who had an even worse starting position. Maybe then, she could become the shinobi she wanted to be.

~SWF~

Naruto had hoped, after that awful day that had nearly seen his secret revealed only for Sasuke to prove he still remembered some part of their shared promises, that he had reached a turning point in regaining the trust and friendship he had lost. When Sasuke had gone so far as to get Naruto's goggles quietly repaired and returned to him before the end of the weekend and their return to the Academy, he had truly thought things restored between them. Instead, Sasuke had just grunted and walked away; lost in the crowds before Naruto could re-cover his eyes and brave the open streets again.

By the time their third year had come about, he was well and truly desperate. In practical skills he was firmly near the top of the class regardless of what his evaluations said. They weren't worth the struggle to read them anyways, only ever containing criticism without any indication of what he should do to improve. His theoretical scores, however, were absolutely abysmal and for good reason.

He had largely ignored the ostracism from the village in general during the years he had had Sasuke's friendship; he hadn't needed to be universally loved so long as he wasn't completely ignored. In the absence of that companionship, he reverted to the tactics that had served him back at the orphanage in a desperate bid for acknowledgment. With some basic shinobi training under his belt, his attention-grabbing behavior had been replaced with carefully orchestrated pranks and elaborate if (physically) harmless traps.

Given his limited awareness range, he could not afford to trust his escapes to outlasting his pursuit. Even the barest genin could easily out-navigate him and herd him into capture points that at running speed he couldn't perceive in time to evade. Instead, he focused intensely on stealth and planning. The longer his lead by the time pursuit began, the more likely he was to successfully evade, and then he could return to bask in the (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) adulation of those witnesses who had not suffered from his art.

His favorite targets were always those that had aroused his ire (instructors who treated him unfairly and peers who shunned him) or any shinobi who didn't look busy (anytime he thought he had any chance of getting away with it). He liked to think of the latter as unrequested mutual training. If he, an academy student, could catch an active-duty shinobi unaware, better that he do it than an enemy! And if he just happened to learn all sorts of useful tricks while running for his life afterward, well, that was just how they said thank-you!

It did not, however, endear him to others as he naively hoped. Sure, Kiba, Chouji, Shikamaru, and some of the civilian or clanless cadets would laugh at his antics (when they were not themselves part of them), but they had little interest in conversing, training, or studying with him otherwise. Sasuke actively and pointedly ignored him, which lead to most of the girls in his nascent fan club doing the same, and the rest of the class just tried to stay out of his way. The instructors quickly discouraged anyone from associating with "that troublemaker", and it was a sure-fire way to earn detention or have your grades mysteriously slip a few points if you ignored them.

It seemed that the harder he tried, the harder everyone else resisted, but the idea of giving up was antithetical to his entire way of life. One day perhaps he would learn that people could not be forced to like him, but that day remained distant.

~SWF~

If Umino Iruka had not been assigned to Naruto's class for the final three years at the Academy, he would likely have snapped. His first three years had been increasingly miserable, and the rare visits from Jiji or trips to Ichiraku's could only do so much to buoy his spirits when fighting such incredible odds. At first, Naruto had been saddened to find out that the Chunin did not remember him. Even though it had only been a single day, and their sensing techniques had less in common than the Hokage had originally hoped, Naruto had learned invaluable lessons from the then-teen. Even more-so than just the actual mechanics of how Iruka suspected his new sense worked, and the suggestions of how to fine-tune it, Naruto valued the sense of family and inclusion he had received that afternoon. He had learned the edges of the Umino family jutsu, something rarely if ever shared with outsiders, and had over the years truly come to appreciate what that meant.

After the first few months, Iruka had passed through the hazing stage from the other instructors and been let in on the secret of which student was believed to be executing those masterful (for cadets, at any rate) pranks on the staff. This was not to say that Naruto was never caught, so much as he just wasn't caught often. The Academy staff were not untalented, but against over a year of pranking experience honed against everything short of ANBU they were collectively at a disadvantage. There was a reason, for most of the staff, why they were not in the field.

When the former prankster elected one day to turn the tables on Naruto, instead of just punishing or lecturing him as the other instructors did, it opened up an entirely new social dialog. Clearly, his new teacher understood the fine and noble art of pranking. And since the man was merely cool with him, rather than borderline hostile, Naruto elected to give him a chance. He set up a prank intended to amuse Iruka, rather than annoy him, and he quickly learned that as long as he timed it so as not to disrupt class the chunin would let him get away with it at least until he stopped laughing! By the end of the first year with his new teacher, the man was occasionally treating him to ramen, _ramen_ , as a reward for a good prank well executed. He would lecture Naruto on his terrible test scores and deficient study habits the entire time, but it clearly came from wanting Naruto to succeed.

Actually telling Iruka why he was struggling so hard was clearly out of the question. The man was obsessed with every shinobi being fully-developed and capable before they were let out into the field, and would never knowingly pass a student with such an incredible handicap no matter his work to overcome it. He was too precious a person to risk losing, and so he was too dangerous to trust with such a volatile secret. Instead, Naruto redoubled his efforts to improve his chakra sense until he could read with it.

Years of practice with the leaf-holding exercise slowly combined with years spent trying to control the cloud of chakra that was his most reliable three-dimensional sense. By the time he met Iruka-sensei, Naruto had learned how to hold things in place with his Chakra anywhere within his cloud. He could not exert very much force at all, barely enough to hold a leaf in the air or nudge a pencil off a desk, but anything he 'pushed' against in that manner gave him as much information as touching it with his hands. It was also dead useful for setting off trap triggers, which was the true secret of his pranking success. No-one expected an academy cadet to be capable of setting off physical traps outside of touch distance without some sort of actual connector, be it ninja wire or a thrown training kunai. That he could do this from any direction only amplified the improbability.

His next goal was to move beyond simply 'pushing' against things in the chakra cloud; he wanted to learn how to stick things to other things the same way he had stuck the leaf to his forehead. The possibilities for traps that dismantled themselves as soon as he released them were endless! By the end of his fourth year, Naruto could 'feel' with his chakra well enough to replicate his old trick of reading carvings with his fingers. He still couldn't feel printed words though, let alone ones written in ink, and every time he tried to read the chalkboard he just smudged it. Which was also a spectacular prank, but one he only got to use on the rare occasions that someone other than Iruka was teaching.

Disrupting Iruka's classes was a really, _really_ bad idea that only served to remind him how much more experienced at pranking his sensei was and that Iruka had no qualms about annoying Naruto whatsoever when retaliating. He knew Iruka had no idea how Naruto pulled the chalkboard trick off, but they both knew it was him, so it hardly mattered.

On the plus side, he could read his own writing if it was in pencil by reading the grooves left in the paper, so he could finally check his work before handing it in. That alone brought his points up several marks, enough that Shikamaru actually had to start putting in an effort to avoid the dreaded position of dead-last and incur his mother's wrath. Naruto, and the rest of their cohort, found this to be the most effective prank Naruto had ever pulled on the Nara which only encouraged him to keep at it despite the latter's protests and pleas.

What could have turned out to be the worst thing to happen in his final years of academy instead turned out to be a second blessing. For the final two years, in order to help control a class of now near-ninja, an assistant instructor was mandated by academy protocol. When this was announced, Naruto had been horrified at the idea. He had experienced exactly one fair and respectable teacher in Iruka, and had no wish to roll those dice yet again.

Mizuki-sensei, however, was if anything even nicer to Naruto than Iruka! Not only was he always full of smiles for the blonde (as long as he wasn't pranking him), Mizuki went out of his way to make sure Naruto got all the help he needed with his academy ninjutsu, often staying after for hours a week with him to help practice! Sometimes, he even went out with Naruto and Iruka to ramen! As long as Iruka was paying, anyways, and so getting Mizuki to join them became the closest thing to pranking Iruka that he allowed himself to do.

~SWF~

Six years after he started, the graduation test at last came around. Mizuki had tried a few times to encourage Naruto to try for early graduation, but he had adamantly refused. He wasn't going to do anything Sasuke might interpret as trying to one-up him, so if the Uchiha wasn't going for it, neither was Naruto. He wanted Sasuke to recognize that he could keep up, not think that Naruto thought himself better!

About a year prior, Naruto had finally cracked both his reading problem and his sticking-things-together problem in the same go. When using the leaf-sticking exercise, the practitioner had themselves as an 'anchor' for their chakra, and so could 'pull' the leaf as well as 'push' it. It was by balancing these two forces that you kept the leaf in place, and it was that balancing act that formed the foundation of chakra control.

In order to stick things together with chakra when one of those things was not himself, he had to first infuse his chakra into one, or even better both, of the items in question. Once so infused, he could move his chakra through the infused items in a crude manner that was not completely dissimilar to how he moved it through himself. It was hard, and the further away from his body he did it the harder it got, but it was possible. Once he could do that, learning how to balance the push and pull was just a matter of hard work and practice, and the only people who worked anywhere near as hard as he did in their class were Sasuke and, oddly, Hinata.

He was pretty sure, actually, that the only thing that had saved Hinata from social ostracization when she overtook Sakura for the top Kunoichi spot in their final year had been the Hyuuga's complete, and when pressed open and quietly vocal, disinterest in competing for Sasuke's attention. Where the shy wallflower had gotten the determination to work so hard for the past few years, Naruto wasn't sure, but her skills were impressive even if she didn't think so.

It wasn't just learning to stick things together though that Naruto got from learning how to infuse his chakra into things. He also gained an entirely new level of information from anything that he infused, far beyond what he could get from just 'touching' it. He did have to be careful not to infuse things too strongly; too much chakra and most items shredded apart. Sometimes rather explosively so, and while that was great for pranks it was incredibly dangerous to do to Academy materials. Like Iruka-gets-you-banned-from-Ichiraku's-for-a-month dangerous.

If he was careful, though, and used just a tiny tiny bit, less than he'd use to hold a leaf on his face, he could actually feel the difference between the paper and the ink finally. Only if he was pushing the chakra right out of his fingertips, and basically tracing the characters out one-by-one, but it was enough.

He'd spent the last year cramming desperately. It had cost him a bit in the physical evaluations, actually quite a lot in them, but it had brought his overall grades up from 'embarrassingly close to flunking out' to 'fine, you can take the exam, if you really think you'll actually pass it' in Iruka's estimation. On the plus side, he had never felt so in control of his chakra now that he actually knew more than the most basic of theory and could actively turn around and use the knowledge he was gaining to get more knowledge faster. By the time of the exam, while he still had to touch the page to feel the ink, he no longer needed to actually trace the characters. Just running his fingers vaguely over them was enough.

And by carefully managing how much chakra was out in his sensory cloud, he could better utilize the remainder of his energy. About one-third of his chakra was enough to keep awareness in a fifty-meter bubble, with a spike out to nearly a hundred in whatever direction he was focusing his attention. The latter only really worked in a mostly-straight line, not like how he could see around corners and other obstacles within his cloud, but it meant he could now see far enough ahead that he could run at full speed and not exceed his awareness. Paying attention to everything around him that far out was a little taxing at first, but he actually found that it kept his brain busy enough that he could much more easily focus on subjects that would otherwise have lost his attention. Like studying six years worth of Academy material in one.

So it was that he found himself, if not breezing through, at least doing better than just scraping by in his written finals. Certainly, it was enough that he had at least elevated from 'dead last' to simply 'last in the class rankings', a matter more of pride and self-respect than of any actual academic value. His physical and taijutsu test scores were about on par with what he had scored in his fifth year. Not the Sasuke-tying results he had wanted, but he could probably get to where he should be within a month or two of dedicated training once he was no longer trying to read the Academy library front-to-back.

He was full of nervous energy when it came time for the final portion of the test, Ninjutsu. He was confident, after two years of Mizuki's coaching, that he would pass. He'd even finally managed the Bunshin in the last few weeks, even if the fewest he could make and have them be stable was around two dozen. Now, he just had to show that to Iruka.

"Uzumaki Naruto! You're up, please proceed to the testing room!"

~SWF~

"Ne, ne, Iruka-sensei, Mizuki-sensei, that was awesome, right? I totally pass, yeah?"

No fewer than thirty-six identical clones chorused out that line and Iruka's heart broke when his gaze slipped to the thirty-seventh source. There was so, so much hope and confidence and nervousness mixed together on that tiny face, and he knew that nervousness was there for all the wrong reasons. How had Mizuki missed this? The man wasn't as experienced a teacher as he was, but this was such an obvious, fundamental problem, and with two of the three required jutsu no less!

Naruto himself was attired the same as always, in that violently orange tracksuit that he insisted was the most comfortable thing he owned, his tinted goggles firmly over his tanned face and his impossibly bright hair spiked comedically every which way. His clones, however...they were hardly even monochrome. That would imply that there was more than one tone, even if it was just shades of gray or a mix of pure black and white. They were just one, single, solitary shade of chakra-blue. The texture was impeccable, when he leaned in far enough he swore he could almost make out the pores on Naruto's face and the individual hairs on his head past the nauseating flatness of color.

His Henge had been the same, absolutely flawless aside from the utter lack of color definition. This went beyond simple color-blindness; a relatively easily corrected flaw that should have been tested for in his first year. This was...it was like Naruto had never actually seen what he was copying or transforming into, yet his recreations were otherwise too perfect to explain any other way.

Naruto would not be the first student that he failed that day, but they were without a doubt the hardest three words he had ever spoken. The boy's face crumpled, and his favorite student burst from the room before he could even begin to explain why.

~SWF~

He hadn't needed to be told. Naruto had known from the moment Iruka's face had gone stiff, that something was wrong. It hadn't taken long either for realization to hit, and he had been instantly mortified beyond any previous experience. He had read all about how important details were in performing both Henge and Bunshin, how critical it was that your replications or illusions be as perfect and flawless as possible. He had studied extensively, spent hundreds of hours in practice, to make sure that he could pull off a convincing disguise within minutes of 'seeing' his target. A perfect one, given about an hour.

He also knew that his clones should be indistinguishable from the real him. How, though, how could he have forgotten that the way he 'saw' things was nothing like how everyone else did?! It had been nine, nearly ten years since he had last seen a color. He could barely remember what green and blue and yellow and red were, let alone all the infinite variety of color that he knew existed! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

He had held out hope, though. Mizuki-sensei had told him everything was perfect, that he was a sure-fire pass! His chakra must have remembered, even if he couldn't. It was a pretty lie to tell himself. He barely even heard Iruka's damning words, but they pounded through his skull on repeat as he hurled himself away from the feeling of disappointment and resolve that rolled through the raucous and temperamental chakra he knew so well. Frustration, amusement, annoyance, and determination he was all familiar with from Iruka, but not this. He couldn't be near it, couldn't bear the confirmation that he'd failed so utterly.

What he found in the hallway was worse.

Sasuke had been standing there, leaned against the classroom wall with his hitai-ite secured across his forehead. He had been waiting, had given Naruto one last chance to prove himself worth acknowledging. And Naruto had failed this second test even more dramatically than the first - not only had he not become a shinobi with the rest of his class, he couldn't even fail with dignity while he looked towards the next exam. As Naruto stood there, 'staring' in his own way, Sasuke just sighed, spared him one last disappointed look of his own, and left without a word. Naruto felt his friend's chakra closing off from him even further as the other boy left, and soon he was running, running away from that feeling as well.

~SWF~

Mizuki smiled as he watched the demon run off into the late afternoon shadows through the classroom window. Everything had gone even better than he'd hoped. He could practically feel Iruka's glare on his back, but he was confident the other man would remain professional at least until it was time to begin the peer-review process all the instructors went through at the end of each year. And by then, he would be long gone. All he had to do was play nice for a few more hours, reel in the hook that he set in the demon two years prior on a whim, and he would be on his way free and clear all the way to Orochimaru and power.

 _A/N: Whoof, okay. Bit more of a chapter this time than last. I know that this chapter is painfully exposition-dense, with not nearly enough actual dialog and action from the characters. Someday, I'll probably try to revisit these early chapters and fix them up into something I can be a little more proud of, but right now I'm just trying to get through to the beginning of canon. There's so much that needs to happen in the time covered here, and I'm worried that if I give it as much time as it 'deserves' that I'll burn out before I ever get to the actual story that I care about. So please bear with me just a little bit further; I promise to do less telling and more showing once we get out of what is effectively the_ prologue _phase of the story! I expect you'll start seeing the writing style I intend to use for the rest of the story next chapter, so if you're interested in the premise please stick around a little longer._

 _You can likely expect to see a revised version of these first two chapters soon, rereading chapter one a few days ago I realized that I really flubbed it when I was editing for verb tense before I posted it. My original draft was all over the place before I settled on_ primarily _past-tense, and it shows unfortunately in the resulting product. I'm pretty sure chapter two is more solid, but I will not have spent as much time editing it as I did chapter one in general as I'm currently more concerned with getting into a good rhythm of posting than I am with relative perfection. Until I've hit chapter ten or so, I'm going to let myself slide a bit from my usual standards in favor of not accidentally abandoning the story or losing interest because I'm taking too long between updates in the early days._

 _Thanks to everyone who followed and favorited right out of the gate! I've been staring at that part of my inbox all week as a reminder to make sure I sat down and wrote this next chapter before the weekend. Special mention goes out to storyseeker7, our first reviewer! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm hoping to update at least once a week, with the occasional bonus update if I have a particularly fruitful writing session._

 _That's all for this chapter. Next time: The infamous Scroll of Seals! Naruto has found a new way to fail at the Bunshin, but will the Kage Bunshin still solve his problem anyways? Mizuki's maleficent machinations will be revealed, truths will be outed, and ass will be kicked. Let's just hope it's the right people swinging their feet!_

 _[Edited 1/23/17_

 _Grammar Edit: Corrected tenses, broke up overly long paragraphs and sentences, and shuffled a few words around for comprehensibility. Fixed missing italics & bold that the Android app Doc Manager ate.]_


	3. Lost Chance?

{include StandardDisclaimer}

The Shinobi Without Fear

Chapter 3 - Lost Chance?

 _Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering._

"Find him, Iruka-kun. You may be one of the only allies he has amongst our forces save Inu and his old squad, and they are currently out of the village. I only want to be handed one scroll tonight."

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

Iruka hopped to the Hokage's window sill and knelt for a brief moment, bringing his hands up into the Ram seal long enough to send out as powerful a pulse of chakra he could manage. Ignoring all of the frantic scatters of chakra, he sought out the one signal that mattered right then. It was faint and fading, but just the barest hint of Naruto's signature chakra cloud remained off to the southwest. Without a word, he leaped to the next roof over and began a desperate chase to arrive before anyone else could do something permanent.

~SWF~

Uzumaki Naruto had not had as severe an emotional roller coaster of a day in as long as he could remember. The confidence in a sure pass, the awful ache of failing twice over despite his best efforts, fresh hope delivered from a trusted source, and now a new level of despair. He had snuck into the Hokage's own residence, laid a simple but noisy trap to distract most of the guards, and working nearly blind with his cloud drawn in as close as he could manage, stolen the forbidden Scroll of Seals right out of the secure library. His secret graduation mission was a rousing success all the way up to the moment when he began channeling his chakra into the scroll so that he could read its contents.

The damn thing absorbed his chakra like a sponge, and he could feel something along its length twisting and pulling his chakra further along than he meant for it to go on top of that. Opening the scroll further just made the problem worse. Scared of this never-before-experienced behavior, he had forcefully ripped his chakra back out of the scroll and began the painstaking process of trying to feel the ink with his bare hands instead.

In the end, he'd had to carefully, carefully shave away the calluses on his left pinky until the raw, new skin was showing. It would be uncomfortable for several hours, and the callus itself would take several days at least to truly rebuild, but until then he had enough sensitivity to just barely make out the thick brush-ink against the parchment. His progress was slow and frustrating, and he kept having to carve notes into the ground next to him with the same kunai as he went to keep track of everything. He'd never manage to actually practice and learn this so-called 'kage bunshin' before Mizuki-sensei arrived to evaluate him!

He soldiered on, smothering his desperation with determination instead. He'd sworn to become a ninja of Konoha on his own to prove to Sasuke that he could keep up. That he wouldn't hold him back, as his friend had accused him of on that day in the woods. He _would_ graduate today. His nindo would allow no other result.

~SWF~

Iruka skidded to a halt in the clearing that housed his target, growling out a quiet " _Found you_ , Naruto!" as he resumed his motion. He stalked closer to the oblivious cadet and peered over his shoulder for a long moment as the child stared resolutely at the torn-up dirt in front of him. When several seconds passed without a response, unusual from his preternaturally aware student, he snagged Naruto by the shoulder and spun him around. "It's over Naruto. Whatever were you trying to pull?!"

Naruto let out a startled squawk and fell on his butt, inadvertently smearing his carving into illegibility. Iruka felt the boy's chakra explode out of him into the usual cloud and marveled for a brief moment at the control Naruto had displayed to hold it back for so long. It masked his own senses rather severely, but there was no need to be overly concerned while they remained within the great walls of Konoha.

"I-i-i-Iruka-sensei! Ahahahaha! You caught me first, huh? Damn. I've almost done it, though! I just need a few more tries, please!"

"A few more tries? A few more tries for _what?_ " Iruka was beyond puzzled. This was _not_ the normal Naruto-getting-caught behavior; if he was interrupted mid-prank he knew to give it up as a lost cause.

"For getting this new jutsu right! For the makeup exam! I just need to learn one of the techniques on the scroll, and then I pass!"

Iruka felt his brain skid to a halt. "You, what? Who the hell told you about something ludicrous like that?"

Naruto's face fell for a long moment, then twisted into a brief snarl that became a grimace of determination. "Mizuki-sensei."

" _What?!_ Why would he-" Iruka didn't manage to finish his question, instead he was interrupted by Naruto's heel blasting into his ribs and knocking him aside. He reeled, tried frantically to gather his wits and figure out why his student would do such a thing at the same time as his mind whipped back to his questions of that afternoon. Any further attempts at thinking were momentarily blanked out by the surge of adrenaline that shot through his body when a double-brace of kunai blasted through the space he and his student had occupied bare moments before. He spun, falling to his own rear in a bizarre mirror of Naruto's actions brief moments before.

"No, Iruka-sensei." Naruto's hand raised and pointed into the trees, and Iruka felt his gaze unerringly follow. His body was primed for combat, but he just couldn't seem to get his mind in gear with the repeated shock. It was why he'd shifted his focus from combat to instruction; he often got overwhelmed when too much new information assaulted his brain at once. It had been a struggle ever since that day he banged his head in training as a genin, and the Hokage had eventually gently suggested a temporary change in career focus at least until he solved the problem. He forced the thought away and focused on what he was seeing, instead. Not his best choice. "I meant, _Mizuki-sensei_ is _here_ and _angry._ "

"Yes, well, how did you expect me to feel, brat? You were supposed to grab the damn scroll without being seen, not get half the village after you! Now I can't pass you!"

Iruka's mind felt increasingly fuzzy, but his own anger was starting to build and push him past the initial imbalance. Mizuki was clearly using Naruto for some nefarious end - the careful, quiet sabotage. The blind-sided expression on Naruto's face when he failed. A 'makeup exam' that just _happened_ to leave an academy student alone in the depths of the woods with one of the village's most precious scrolls, and now the chunin that Iruka couldn't recall seeing at the emergency mobilization briefing showed up in full battle gear. He'd missed half of Mizuki's ranting in his attempts to refocus, but what he heard when he tuned back in at once sent his mind reeling further and galvanized him to act despite that.

"-law laid down 12 years ago! None are to reveal that _you_ are the demon kitsune that attacked the village! The Kyuubi!"

"No! Mizuki! Naruto, don't listen to a word he's saying!" Iruka spun to look at Naruto, only to find him pale, haggard, and breathing in short gasps. The child stumbled backward a few steps towards the scroll before he steadied himself and started to glance between the two chunin. Iruka risked looking away from Mizuki, hoping that he still held enough of Naruto's trust that he could convince him it was a lie ( _but it isn't!_ ). Naruto seemed to lock onto Iruka in that moment, his face growing more frantic. _No. A lie won't help him. Only the truth will!_ "You're not the Fox, Naruto! It's sealed in you, yes, but _you are not the Kyuubi!_ "

"Kyuubi or just a brat, I don't care. I'll kill you both, take the damn scroll, and be done with all of you!" Mizuki reached back even as he screamed, and unhitched the giant shuriken from his vest. Two broad swings later, he hurled them at Naruto in quick succession.

Iruka would later reflect that, while he was grateful that his body unfroze in response to the danger his student was in, it would have been much more useful had his mind unstuck itself as well. Perhaps if it had, he would have come up with a better plan than 'get in between Naruto and the shurikens'. In the moment before the blade carved into his back, he managed a smile for his charge. Even if only for a few more seconds, Naruto would live. _Wait, hand seals?_

Naruto vanished from his sight just as something crashed into the ground in front of him. _Kawarimi! No! There were two!_ He whirled, expecting only to see blood or worse as the second shuriken blasted into Naruto. Instead, he watched his student artfully whirl, arm through the hole of the shuriken to redirect it off to the side instead of trying to stop it. _When did he get that fast?_

"Mizuki-sensei...you...you were always lying, weren't you? You were never happy because you were helping me...you were happy because you were ruining _the demon_ and no-one knew." Naruto's expression seemed carved from stone, a tortured look that never belonged on a child's face, and he didn't bother to turn to face his opponent as he spoke. Mizuki seemed too shocked at his attack being so neatly diverted to do anything other than stare blankly for a few long, precious seconds.

"Only one chance at this," Naruto mumbled, pulling his hands together in a sign that Iruka didn't recognize. " _Kage bunshin no jutsu!_ "

An enormous cloud of smoke erupted around Naruto and sent Iruka into a brief coughing fit. He heard movement from where Naruto last was, but ignored it. He couldn't possibly have performed that jutsu. _He probably just fell over. Hopefully, it's just chakra exhaustion and not...focus! Where's Mizuki?_

"Get your head in the game, Iruka-sensei! He's coming!"

It was too much. Naruto was awake?! _Maybe it just failed, didn't take all his chakra?_ He didn't know, but he focused on the need to protect his student and charged out of the cloud of chakra smoke. He found himself startled once again by the sight that greeted him; Naruto was swaying in and out of Mizuki's reach in a desperate dance.

Mizuki was clearly not taking the fight seriously, just toying with the boy, but there was also an edge of frustration to his movements. Iruka shook his head fiercely and kicked himself into motion again. He couldn't pull a plan together, but this was why he had trained so hard as a genin and young chunin. Even without a plan, his body knew how to move, what to do. He could buy them both enough time for his brain to get over itself.

"Naruto! Get out of here! Take the scroll, go back to the tower! Keep screaming for help so no one attacks you!" he shouted, watching detached as his arm flew up to knock Mizuki's aside.

Instead of listening, Naruto rolled around to his right and tried to dart a kick into Mizuki's thigh. "Clone's on it, sensei! I'll help you!"

"Oh, now you're not just defending the demon, you're working _with_ the fox? That _monster_ killed your parents, Iruka!" Mizuki's eyes danced with a mad hate, and he mercilessly snapped a sloppy kick of his own in Naruto's general direction. Mizuki quickly ducked down on his planted foot to clear a swing Iruka launched into the provided opening, then hopped away to buy some space.

"He's not a monster, Mizuki! He's the only thing holding the Kyuubi back!" Iruka started to dart forward, only to freeze ( _again? Come_ on _Iruka, get it together!_ ) at his former assistant's next words.

"Why do you think he hides his eyes, Iruka? The fox took over years ago! He's been hiding in plain sight ever since!" Mizuki was all but frothing in his madness, and turned from the unmoving Iruka to an equally-paralyzed Naruto.

Iruka felt almost helpless to watch. He _needed_ to know, couldn't risk Mizuki being wrong. Why _did_ the boy constantly wear such dark lenses? Even now, in the dead of night, they'd remained firmly in place. Had his eyes adapted so much? Could he see in the darkest depths like an animal, reflecting back light from sharp red eyes? And if not, why wouldn't he defend himself, say something, anything? Some part of Iruka slowly drew a kunai out of his pouch, but he couldn't say who he was getting ready to throw it at.

Mizuki was openly gloating as he stalked towards the child, his laughter wild and damning. "Nothing to say, _demon_? Then's let's let your eyes _speak for themselves!_ "

Iruka just watched as Mizuki reached out and ripped the goggles off Naruto's face, casting them aside without a second look. The boy's eyes were slammed shut, and Iruka felt his heart crack. He closed his own eyes, not wanting to see anymore, but ripped them open again when Mizuki roared out a strangled "Show us!" and lunged for the boy again. Naruto's eyes flashed open in a face filled with panic, and for Iruka, the world froze.

He _remembered_ those eyes, in a much smaller face. In a much brighter place. Laughter and pain and learning. Wild theories discussed with a four-year-old, the Hokage's gentle wisdom. A blonde-haired ANBU, reaching for his head... _Oh kami, he's blind. He's been blind all along. That's why he hides, I'd never let him pass if...oh, kami._ He felt his brain shift, felt the fog roll away. He'd had his entire worldview upended that day, but then it had all been sealed up. _That's_ why he had always locked up, his brain knew there was something important he had never finished thinking about, but there had been something in the way. No longer.

Mizuki had reeled back too; the revelation stunning. Unlike Iruka, though, Mizuki seemed to come away with a different answer. "Feh. A trick, I'm sure, to play to _Iruka-sensei's_ feelings. You can't fool me!"

As Mizuki chambered what would have been a devastating kick into Naruto's chest, Iruka slid thoughtlessly into motion again. Within a step he mastered himself and shifted his stance, deflecting Mizuki's kick with a snap of his own leg. _Much better than just eating that to my face._ He could see Mizuki opening his mouth yet again, but Iruka had simply heard _enough_ of that bile, and filled the opening with his boot. There was a satisfying snap, a mix of teeth and blood flying free as Mizuki's head launched backward. Iruka paused in the follow-through long enough to grin at Naruto, then completed his spin and all but leaped onto their reeling opponent. "Hands off my student!"

A strike to the inner elbow opened Mizuki's flailing guard. A backhand into his face kept him disoriented, spiked the pain again. A snap-kick into the ribs, re-chambered and fired again straight into the sternum just after, kept him moving away from Naruto. Or it would have if the damn child hadn't slid right into the gap to land his own series of punches to Mizuki's gut. Enraged, their opponent dug in his heels and swung wildly at the blonde in front of him. But just as before, Naruto slid out of the way of each swing, sometimes slapping a hand against the offending limb to knock it further off course. This time, though, Iruka did not hesitate to slide in alongside and used his longer reach to attack around the soon-to-be genin candidate. He wasn't sure exactly when he'd made that decision, but if Naruto could hold up against a chunin, even one as psychologically weak as Mizuki, for this long? Well, that certainly bumped his taijutsu score up enough to cover for that ninjutsu failure.

He'd never hear the end of it from Gai-san. That would have to be left out of the report.

It was amazingly freeing, to fight without his mind feeling so slippery. As he planted a hand on Naruto's braced shoulder and seamlessly rotated on that pivot to land a crushing shin-kick into Mizuki's temple, he briefly considered going back to mission-duty. There was just something deeply satisfying about working on a team again in combat, even as impromptu as this pairing was. The slow, tentative grin on Naruto's face when Mizuki didn't get back up dashed that thought. Beating up an enemy nin with your comrade, excellent. Beating up an enemy nin with your _student_? Priceless.

~SWF~

Naruto jogged off to the side while Iruka neatly bound up the unconscious prisoner with ninja wire. He was particularly pleased that Iruka was doing so with _Mizuki_ ' _s_ own supply after having taken everything of use from him. He'd felt his clone dissipate only dozen or so meters out of the clearing, and had kept a corner of his awareness on the scroll ever since. Iruka hadn't asked him to grab it, probably because he didn't know the clone had failed, but he very badly needed to stay busy just then. As giddy as he was about having helped Iruka win that fight, he was frantically attempting to keep his mind off Mizuki's words from before Iruka had started to snap out of it. He would have been happy to believe the _teme_ was just spouting off to distract him, but the theory fit entirely too well with the way nearly everyone in the village treated him. To say nothing of the way fear and loathing had rolled through Iruka's chakra every time Mizuki pressed the point.

And wasn't _that_ something to kick himself over! He'd thought since he'd always felt such glee from Mizuki that he was friendly. That the vague sense of deception had to do with the fact that Mizuki was instructing him in secret, where the other teachers wouldn't tell him off for it. He had trusted his vague impressions as being golden, almost like he could read people's thoughts or emotions, but he now doubted that strongly. It was probably just their chakra responding, and anyone with decent chakra control could probably hide or manipulate such things. Certainly something that a chunin could be expected to pull, especially one that was planning a betrayal of the entire village like that without being noticed!

And that, in turn, brought into question everything he thought gave him reason to question Itachi's behavior! Oh Kami, had he lost Sasuke's friendship to a lie? Was that Itachi's goal all along, to separate Sasuke from anyone else who might have supported him?

Sometimes Naruto wished he wasn't quite so good at distracting himself. It usually just ended up with him thinking about something else he'd tried to ignore anyways. _Oh good, Iruka-sensei caught up!_ "Over here-ttebayo! My clone popped and dropped the scroll, but I've got it again."

"Good. Let's head back to the tower, I'll help you explain everything to Hokage-sama. Speaking of explanations...I'm sorry if you aren't comfortable talking about it, but I promise I won't talk to anyone about it besides Hokage-sama without asking you first." Iruka paused, looking at him, and Naruto felt his stomach clench in dread. He wasn't ready to talk about this thing with the Ky- "I'm sorry I forgot about your being blind, Naruto. Hokage-sama had my memory sealed by ANBU to keep your secret from that day in the hospital. But, as your sensei, I need to know how this works. I can't consider passing a blind genin without some serious reassurance that it won't get you killed."

Naruto was silent for a long while. He wordlessly accepted his goggles back from Iruka, who had scooped them up along with Mizuki before he followed in Naruto's wake, and tied off the broken ends of the strap to each other. He could at least be grateful that the lenses hadn't broken this time, but he really needed to find a less bulky solution. Maybe he could get some big sunglasses like Shino? No, they'd be hard to keep on his head, his taijutsu style was much more active than the Aburame's. He shifted his focus from the path ahead to Iruka, trying to judge how much longer he could stall. From the stern expression he found there, he guessed not long. Naruto let out an explosive sigh, then tucked his hands between his head and the end of the Scroll sticking up over his shoulder.

"You remember our talk in the hospital now, right sensei?" Naruto paused long enough for Iruka to nod. "Well, you were mostly right. I'm emitting chakra all the time, into a big cloud that I keep around me. It goes out about fifty meters now, although if I focus in just one direction it's closer to a hundred. I used to have to wait for it to pulse out and come back, like how your sonar jutsu works, but now that I've learned better control I kinda stay connected to it all the time, and anything my chakra touches, I can see. Well, it's not really like seeing, I don't get light or dark or colors, but I'm really good at figuring out how things are shaped just by feeling them now! And since I can see all sides of things at the same time, and where they are compared to other things, it's really almost just like seeing! Really hard to pay attention to everything at the same time, though…"

Naruto was oblivious to the shock written across Iruka's face, lost in his efforts to describe his sense to someone else for the first time in years. "I can cheat too when other ninja are around! Everybody gives off a little chakra of their own too, right? Well, if they're not doing anything with it, it kinda moves through my cloud, and I get the same kind of impressions from it that I used to from my own before I started directing it. And, and, I kinda know what they're feeling. Or, I thought I did, but Mizuki-teme lied to me, and who knows who else, so I dunno. Gonna have to test that part. But, but, the really good part is that I can even see things that are normally hidden really, really well-ttebayo! Especially if they're moving, 'cuz that makes my chakra move too. Right, ANBU-san?"

~SWF~

Iruka jerked his head up at Naruto's last comment and pulsed his own chakra unconsciously in time to catch no fewer than three ANBU with their palms on their masks. The masked nin dropped out of the trees in a triangle around them, and he reflexively snatched Naruto's shoulder to make sure he stopped. One came towards him, and none-too-gently lifted Mizuki out of his fireman's carry before vanishing in shunshin. Another took the scroll from an unresisting Naruto and vanished in the same fashion, leaving only the last cat-masked member.

"I will escort you to Hokage-sama. Naruto-kun, I will transport you. Iruka-san, please follow." The cat-masked ANBU placed his hand firmly on Naruto's other shoulder, then looked to Iruka and waited.

"Of course, Neko-san." Iruka quickly ran through the hand signs, met the ANBU's gaze to match the timing, and vanished from the woods in a swirl of leaves a moment later.

~SWF~

"-and then ANBU-san-tachi arrived, and escorted us here. That concludes my report, Hokage-sama."

Naruto stifled his third yawn in as many minutes. While the debriefing wasn't exactly boring, it was now quite late and he was more than a bit tired. He forced himself to start paying attention properly though since it looked like Jiji was going to start asking his questions finally.

"Hmm. Naruto-kun, I understand somewhat how you have overcome your challenge, but that doesn't explain to me how you managed to read the scroll at all. It does not, after all, have chakra, and even if you could 'feel' it with your chakra, I find it hard to believe that you can feel so much as to be able to read the ink."

"Ah, heh, no. I can't read with my chakra-sense the way I see-" Naruto began to explain, only to be cut off by his sensei.

"Wait, then how have you been keeping up at all in class? Your test scores have been improving so much. You haven't been cheating, have you?" There was a dangerous undertone in Iruka's voice, and Naruto quickly moved to clarify, his arms waving in vigorous denial.

"No, no-ttebayo! I learned my lesson! No, it's...hm. Well, it's kinda like leaf-sticking at a distance." This time Naruto ignored the startled "What?" from Iruka and kept going. "You gotta stick your chakra into it, but not too much or it'll shred! With just a bit, though, I can feel the difference between paper-with-chakra-in-it and ink-with-chakra-in-it, and that's how I read! It was really weird with the Scroll, though, it felt like it wanted to keep taking more, and-"

"You channeled chakra into the Scroll of Seals?!" The Hokage was standing behind his desk, sounding both scared and angry, and Naruto snapped his mouth shut and just nodded. In a flash, he found himself hustled out of Jiji's office, with Iruka following seconds later. After another moment, an ANBU appeared just outside the office with the Scroll before slipping inside. There was a pulse of foreign chakra from within the office that pushed all of his unceremoniously out through the gaps in the door frame, and then he couldn't hear or sense anything happening inside.

After a few confused moments, Iruka shrugged, signaled something to the ANBU standing outside of jiji's office, and jogged off. He was back only a few minutes later, but he just shook his head and motioned for silence when Naruto started to pipe up. Now both bored and nervous, Naruto slumped into the Hokage's secretary's chair and started spinning in place. He heard Iruka sigh, but since he hadn't actually been told to stop he just switched to swinging back and forth instead of in full circles.

The fifteen longest minutes of the day yet passed before the same ANBU came out of the office carrying the scroll again, and Naruto and Iruka were called back into the office. Naruto thought the Hokage looked even more tired than he had before, but he was also much more relaxed than he had been when they were kicked out.

"Naruto-kun, while you could not have known at the time, what you did was _extraordinarily_ dangerous. There are a great number of fuuinjutsu inscribed on the Scroll, and any number of them could have been activated when you channeled chakra into it. You are going to have to be _exceptionally_ careful in the future when dealing with scrolls around shinobi - very often they contain fuuinjutsu of some kind, just waiting for the correct application of chakra to activate. Using the _wrong_ kind of chakra can be disastrous."

Naruto blanched, and nodded rapidly. "I understand, jiji! I'll make sure to have someone I trust check scrolls from now on before I try to read them!"

"Good. Now. Were you able to read the entire kage bunshin entry before Iruka-kun and Mizuki arrived? Or only part?"

"Eh, I think I managed to read the whole thing? I've only gotten to try it once so far, though. It mostly worked, I think, but the clone didn't last so I think I got part of it wrong. Is it OK if I keep practicing? I think it would be really useful." Naruto quietly crossed his fingers behind his back. If he was allowed to keep it, maybe he could use it instead of the regular bunshin to pass next time.

Jiji and Iruka shared a brief look, the former glancing at the latter's side before nodding slowly. Iruka then turned to him and studied him intently before speaking, drawing a folded cloth from his pocket as he did so. "I think it is safe to say that you have earned this tonight, Naruto. Whether or not you manage to master the kage bunshin. Although I'll supervise your practice over the next two days until team assignments to make sure you don't over-do it."

Naruto stared at Iruka uncomprehending for a long moment before he directed all of his focus onto the bundle in the man's hands. Iruka slowly unfolded the cloth, and Naruto realized what it was as the length of cloth fell away to expose smooth metal. He didn't even bother to hide the few tears that leaked out from under his goggles when Iruka-sensei gently tied his hitai-ite around his head just above them.

"In the future, though, I'll expect you to finish catching up on your book work. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to get on par with your peers, given what you've told us tonight."

Naruto nodded tightly at Iruka, still struggling with the thought of speaking at that moment. He nodded at jiji in turn when he got his second piece of advice as a newly-minted shinobi.

"As for myself, I expect you to exercise better judgment in the future. Over the next few days, Iruka-kun will review the command structure with you in addition to supervising your practice in kage bunshin. In general, there are very few circumstances in which you should blindly accept orders from someone who is not explicitly your commander. And if it sounds like treason, even a little bit, I want you to make _very_ certain your orders are correct before you follow them. Understood?"

"Hai, jiji."

"Good. You're dismissed, Genin Uzumaki." Jiji-no, the Hokage, when he's talking like that- broke his stern look with a smile. "Goodnight, Naruto-kun. I expect to see you tomorrow for your shinobi registration."

"Hai!"

~SWF~

After Naruto had been collected by an ANBU to make sure he returned home without further incident, Iruka returned his attention to the Hokage fully. "Hokage-sama, I would like to update my recommendations for team placement in light of this evening's events."

Iruka waited a few moments until the Hokage silently motioned for him to continue. He squared his stance and gathered his thoughts for just a few moments longer, then nodded and did so. "Now that we do not have to accommodate for Naruto's failure in our team layouts, I would at a minimum suggest that we return to the first draft I submitted. As you may recall, my original recommendation when I had expected Naruto-kun to pass was that he be placed in Kakashi-san's Team 7 with Sasuke-kun and Sakura-chan. While Naruto was not the lowest-ranked member of the class, and Sakura-chan not the highest ranked kunoichi candidate, it would have formed the style of balanced squad we aim for without disrupting the other special squadrons coming through in this group."

This time, the Hokage's motion was less 'go ahead' and more 'get to the point'. Iruka swallowed tightly and reminded himself of the late hour.

"I would submit that we swap the placements of Haruno Sakura and Hyuuga Hinata. The stated goal of the balanced team concept is to allow the more skilled or experienced members of the team to help bring any lacking partners up to standards. While Sakura-chan certainly has the scholastic aptitude, Hinata-chan would offer her teammates additional benefits beyond simple academics. For Sasuke-kun, I expect she would provide a calming influence without the contention of fannish behavior. For Naruto, she may be his singular greatest hope of learning how to properly harness his unusual chakra sense.

Based on his descriptions, the only other group I can think of that has developed methods for compartmentalizing and processing sensory information over very large areas would by the Hyuuga clan. While the clan as a whole would likely be outright hostile to the concept, Hinata-chan herself has shown no outward negative bias towards Naruto and in fact, I suspect that he had something to do with her sudden increase in work ethic several years ago." Iruka paused again to further marshal his thoughts, as well as gauge the Hokage's reception to his statements thus far. His questing gaze found a small smile playing over a much less guarded face than Iruka expected.

"As for Sakura-chan, I believe that with her exceptional chakra control and...vivid...imagination she would be a phenomenal candidate for studying Genjutsu under Kurenai-san. She also has the general intelligence needed to keep up with Shino-kun, and a fierceness that should help her hold her own against Kiba-kun. While she will dilute the tracking focus of the team somewhat, I believe the added flexibility of a strong Genjutsu specialist would allow them to take on a broader selection of assignments."

"Write it up, Iruka-kun. While I agree with your assessments, I would like to consult the Jounin involved before making a final decision. I will call for Kakashi first thing tomorrow and will send someone for yourself and Kurenai-san closer to midmorning. Please have the updated team suggestion dossiers completed by then."

Iruka grimaced internally at the order, but he could hear the unspoken message underneath quite clearly. 'You believe in this that strongly? Then make it happen.' He snapped off a sharp salute and bow, bidding the Hokage a good night and heading for home once dismissed. He would grab a few blessed hours of sleep, and get up in the morning when the administrative genin teams were available again to assist him. He would do right by his students, all of them.

~SWF~

"Maa, I can't help but feel as though I have been played, Hokage-sama." Kakashi was a study in petulance when he appeared on the windowsill of the Hokage's office, clearly only minutes behind the arrival of his leader's other guests. He sidled into place beside Kurenai when his whining went unacknowledged and took the slim folder that Iruka offered without comment.

This being no less than exactly what he'd expected, Iruka similarly kept his mouth shut and stepped back to the side of the Hokage's desk to await the responses of the two jounin. He'd spent the better part of the past hour rapidly rewriting his team recommendations for these two, having wrangled a rather unwilling trio of admin-genin to re-pull the appropriate files from the archives and make fresh copies while he did so. His arguments were largely the same as what he had said to his Hokage the night before but now were able to cite relevant data points from the cadet's academy records. From the looks on their faces, it would be an uphill battle. He'd expected as much from Kurenai, but he had not anticipated as much resistance as he was reading from Kakashi's narrowing eye.

His musings were cut short by the former ANBU captain shutting the folder with an audible slap ( _'Do they teach that in ABNU training? It's_ paper _!'_ ) and dropping it back on the Hokage's desk dismissively. Kurenai was much more polite; she merely closed her folder quietly and returned her attention to the front of the room.

"I see that neither of you are pleased with these suggestions. Would either of you care to expand on why this is?" Hiruzen glanced from one to the other, patient as time. Iruka was less sanguine; if the two jounin outright rejected the change it was unlikely that the Hokage would force the issue on Iruka's word alone. After a few moments of silence, Kurenai was the first to speak.

"This change would greatly dilute the effectiveness of my team as a tracking squad. While her range is not currently spectacular, Hinata's Byakugan would be invaluable in maintaining overwatch while her teammates are focused on their own techniques. Sakura might in time be able to provide genjutsu cover, it's hardly the same thing as being able to avoid an ambush entirely by seeing it coming in advance."

"Yes, but consider that as they advance those same teammates may not always be able to count on such omniscient backup. Particularly once they have become chunin, they are likely to be shuffled and reassigned as needed to cover particular needs or service gaps. If they have always been able to forgo situational awareness, that may leave them dangerously exposed." It was a bit of a stretch, and Iruka was well aware of that, but it was true all the same. "If their development always takes this into consideration, they will be better suited for individual missions, and on the occasions where they may work with Hinata-chan in the future it will be far easier to adapt to having her oversight than not."

"You may have a point, Umino-san, but I am also loathe to see her chances of making genin fall as far as they will should she be placed on Kakashi's team. From her file, she has enough confidence issues as it is. Failing at this stage might lead her to give up on becoming a kunoichi entirely."

Iruka's eyes snapped to the still-silent second jounin, then to the Hokage. He wasn't unaware of the man's reputation, but from Kurenai's comments, was it worse than he knew? For his part, the Hokage merely pulled a small file book from his drawer and slid it over to the chunin. Iruka listened with half an ear as he began rapidly skimming over what appeared to be a list of past genin evaluations. He jumped from one to the next, stopping each time he saw 'Hatake, K.' under the 'Evaluator' heading, and his dread mounted with each entry.

"Consider this, Kurenai-san. Hinata-chan is particularly lacking in outside acknowledgment of her efforts. While any competent jounin-sensei will rectify this," the Hokage paused for a moment to direct a sharp glance at a disinterested Kakashi, "it still would leave her without the recognition of her peers. I am certain, knowing their clan philosophies, that Kiba-kun and Shino-kun would be sure to include and encourage her, but she would likely question the impetus of these actions simply _because_ of their clans. Are they praising her success because she has earned that praise, or because they have both always been taught the value of the group?"

"Whereas Sasuke-kun and Naruto-kun are a notorious loner and outcast respectively, so any acknowledgment from either of them will be less questionable? I do understand your point, Hokage-sama, but I am still skeptical."

"Hmm. I should mention, then, that it has long been my suspicion that Hinata-chan's sudden surge in focus and determination is in some way related to Naruto-kun. She was reported as following him through the village for several months prior to her ascension in the academy ranks, and Iruka-kun and the...other academy instructors have also noted a well-managed but rather obvious infatuation. While I will not go into details at this time, I can also assure you that Hinata-chan is uniquely suited to drawing out many of Naruto's strengths as well. I would suspect that being able to map his own improvements against her efforts would give her another source of confidence, one not as easily derailed by opinions from outside her team."

Iruka was having difficulty following the conversation, in light of his current reading material. While he'd made incredible progress in mastering his tendency to freeze up at new information in the short hours since his memory block had been released, old habits did not die easily. Why in kami's name had he tried to get Naruto placed on _Kakashi's_ team, out of all of them? He should have argued for switching Naruto with Kiba or Shino instead! He could have played it up as wanting to make sure the tracking team had a heavy hitter! At least then, Naruto would have a fair chance! He was on the verge of opening his mouth no matter how bad it would make him look when words that he no longer wanted to hear grabbed his attention.

"Very well. I concur that these changes are in the best interest of the majority of the genin involved. While I do not look forward to the process, perhaps I can knock some proper sense and discipline into Sakura-chan by showing her what kunoichi life is really like." Kurenai paused, and her next sentence came out as a mutter before her voice firmed up again. "Ideally without her having to bathe in blood. Particularly her own. I withdraw my objections, Hokage-sama."

Iruka's gaze slowly ratcheted back to the Hokage, who stood from his chair and lit his pipe before turning to face the window behind his desk. He was sure there was a perfectly good reason why he hadn't been briefed on Kakashi's rejection rate. What he was less sure of was if he could get away with smothering the Hokage with his own hat until the man agreed to tell him what that reason was.

"Maa, don't I get an opinion on this?"

Salvation! If Kakashi rejected them before he officially tested them, Iruka could just argue that it wasn't a proper evaluation, and try to get another jounin assigned to them! Yet again the Hokage proceeded to neatly skewer his plans before he could properly finish hoping for them.

"Kakashi-kun. Do you have a single objection to this that does not, in some way, relate to the fact that you will need to read a fourth student profile?" asked Sarutobi with a glance at Kakashi over his shoulder, and Iruka swore he felt a hint of killing intent pass by him.

Kakashi merely sighed, snatched the folder back up off the desk, and retreated out the window before he could lose any further face. From the look on Kurenai's, Iruka suspected that the jounin would once again be the source of the night's gossip in one or another of the senior shinobi hangouts. Without the man in question in the room, though, he finally felt able to ask the question that had been plaguing him for the last several minutes.

"He's never passed _a single team?!_ "

~SWF~

Naruto 'watched' as his fourteenth clone that day poofed back out of existence. Each attempt was coming closer to working, the clone less malformed and lasting longer before it broke down. He was quite certain he'd already have it figured out if Iruka-sensei would just let him hurl chakra at the jutsu, but his sensei was adamant that no matter how large his reserves were he was to take things slow and only slowly ramp up the chakra until it worked. Naruto's memory of the scroll's details was a bit fuzzy, but he was fairly certain he'd need to throw at least half his chakra at this for it to work. Unfortunately, he'd spent years focusing on using small amounts of it instead, and so the process of building up to such an enormous expenditure was proving frustrating.

On the plus side, it meant that much more time spent in Iruka's company. The chunin was mostly busy grading and filling out other paperwork associated with the end of the term. Nominally he was chaperoning Naruto's efforts, but since Iruka had never learned this jutsu himself it mostly consisted of general advice and admonitions to be careful. In between attempts, they had swapped stories of what they'd each been up to in the hectic past few days. Iruka was being annoyingly cagey about the exact details, but he'd apparently taken some steps to make sure Naruto had a good team now that he'd made the cut after all. As for himself, well.

"So, so, jiji really wanted me to retake my picture, because he thinks that the goggles and the hitai-ite look silly together, but I don't really care because I'm not giving up either one, but then! This kid, I guess he's jiji's grandson, comes bursting in screaming about how he's gonna be the fifth Hokage, and tries to attack him with a shuriken, but instead of throwing it he's gonna stab him like it's a kunai, but then he trips on his own damn scarf! I couldn't even laugh, it was so pathetic!" In retrospect, he was pretty sure that shuriken was just a training one, not even sharp. He hadn't focused very closely on it, but he'd made out the general way the kid was holding it, and if it had had any proper edges the kid would've sliced his hand in two the way his chubby mitt was wrapped around it. "And this weird ninja chases in after him, going on about 'Honorable Grandson' this, and 'there was no trap' that, and then gives me _that look_ , so I start ignoring him."

"But then, the kid jumps up, and tries to say that _I_ must have tripped him-ttebayo! And he gets up in my face when I call him out, shouting about how he thought I was going to hit him, but now that I know who he is apparently I was supposed to let him get away with this?" Naruto shook his head, and muttered in an undertone that "I swear, they were almost as loud as Ino-chan and Sakura-chan fighting over Sasuke."

Off to the side, Iruka accidentally spat his coffee out over the papers he was going over and groaned quietly. He really should have learned by now that the consumption of food or beverage should be done with great care around Naruto when he was in a snit. "So, what did you do?"

"I bashed him over the head and told him to behave properly instead of like a brat!"

From the look on Iruka's face, Naruto suspected this was _not_ the correct response. He stubbornly crossed his arms and distinctly _did not_ pout at the silent reprimand. The kid was being a complete brat, what was he supposed to do, coddle him like apparently the whole rest of the village did?

"And that Ebisu-teme! He just stood there, screaming about how I'm some sort of scoundrel and how he's this great teacher and the kid should just ignore me and listen to him if he wants to become the Hokage and blah, blah blah. Jiji was just ignoring the whole thing, I think he was embarrassed that I was seeing it, so I snuck out. I think the kid tried to follow me, but he kept tripping on his scarf and eventually I lost him and doubled back over here."

"Naruto…" Iruka sighed a bit, then looked up at him and continued on. "You of all people should know how hard it can be when people talk past you. Maybe you could have given him some advice instead of just brushing him off like that."

"Yeah, but would a brat like that even listen to what I said? He probably just wanted to fight me so he could stop feeling embarrassed."

"Honestly, he probably would. Ebisu-san is very knowledgeable, and has excellent lecturing skills, but, and you _cannot_ tell anyone else I said this, I'm fairly certain Hokage-sama only assigned him to tutor Konohamaru-kun to try and get two of his headaches to deal with each other. Ebisu-san is very poor about respecting his students and Konohamaru-kun, well. You've met now. I think he was hoping that Konohamaru-kun would learn some manners and that Ebisu-san would translate his fawning into actual respect so that he could be a proper sensei someday."

Naruto slowly tilted his head to one side, thinking it all through. He _could_ find the kid easily enough he supposed, just stick a foot into the street near the Hokage tower and step on anything long and fluttery that rushes by, but would it really be worth it?

"Talk to the kid and then you can tell me about it over some Ichiraku's."

"Done-ttebayo!"

~SWF~

"Ne, Iruka-sensei?"

It was the last day before team announcements. He'd finally gotten his new bunshin working, and found that he could make several dozens in one go without much effort. To his _immense_ satisfaction, the answer really had been to just pour chakra into it heedlessly. The clones practically formed themselves at that point; he was really just splitting off big enough chunks of his chakra that the separated bit could temporarily sustain itself. By following the same basic theory as the regular bunshin it was trivial to shape them like himself, but unlike his conventional colorless clones, shadow-clones copied his original self perfectly. Or so Iruka said, and he was willing to trust him on that.

He'd also discovered to his glee that the shadow clones could both share in and expand his sensory cloud. Since they all shared the same chakra, what one of them felt the others did too. There was a sort of signal attenuation as they grew further apart, though, and if their sensory clouds disconnected due to the distance he lost the real-time picture. On the plus side, just like the scroll had said he gained the memories of his clones when they popped. So even if he couldn't sense it in real-time, he'd know everything they had sooner or later. Even better, if they popped while in his main cloud, he could absorb the chakra back! _Best jutsu ever!_ He just needed to get that mass version figured out, but he hadn't been able to read that whole part before Iruka interrupted him and he was in no hurry to ask Jiji for another look. He'd just experiment on his own later or something.

As always, though, completing a project meant he had time to think again, and something had been bothering him about the fight with Mizuki. He waited until Iruka looked up from whatever paperwork he was doing that day so that he knew he had the man's full attention.

"So, uh. When you do your echo-jutsu, you can feel other people's chakra too, right?" Naruto waited for his affirming nod, then continued. "Can you...I dunno, it sounds crazy but, do you ever feel like you can tell what they're feeling when you do?"

"Ah, no, nothing so fancy as that. A general idea of where they are and how strong they are, but that's about it. Wait, didn't you say something that night about being surprised that you hadn't felt Mizuki's betrayal?"

Naruto's hand shot to the back of his head and rubbed at the knot of his hitai-ite self-consciously. "Yeah, that's why I'm wondering if you maybe could do it too. I think maybe it's that he was always just so happy to be screwing me over; that I just feel whatever the strongest emotion is that they're feeling. But there's something kinda bothering me."

Iruka looked at him seriously for a long moment, before he stood up from his desk and came over to sit instead on the table next to Naruto in the front row. Iruka ruffled his hair for a moment, and while Naruto squirmed his head away a bit, he also managed to scoot a bit closer in the same motion. Iruka didn't say anything, though, just waited, and let Naruto pull his thoughts together more before he spoke.

"So, I normally ignore most of what I feel that way, because. Well, it kinda hurts. Not _because_ they feel that way, although that does hurt but in a different way and they're all idiots so I try not to think about it too much, but. I mean the feeling _itself_ hurts; like it hurts the person feeling it as much as it hurts me but they don't realize that it's making them hurt so they just get madder and feel it even more."

Iruka sighed, and when his teacher awkwardly pulled Naruto into a one-armed hug he didn't resist. "Hate. I'm so sorry, Naruto. That's what you're feeling. People are afraid because of what you have sealed inside you, but they don't want to be afraid so they get angry instead. And they're not allowed to do anything about all that fear and anger, and combined with what everyone remembers the Kyuubi doing...eventually, that fear and anger turns into hate."

"And that makes them hurt inside, so they get even angrier, and...damn. I really didn't want to be right." Naruto tried, he really did, but he couldn't quite hold back the sniffle. He was thirteen, dammit! But it was so _hard_ to ignore it all, even if paying attention just made it hurt worse. He felt Iruka's arm tighten around him just a little bit more, and the damn broke. He spun in place, clutched at Iruka's vest, and buried his face in the tough fabric while he bawled.

"Someday, Naruto, they'll all see past that, like I have, and Hokage-sama always has. Teuchi-san and Ayame-chan, too. No-one _wants_ to suffer like that, but sometimes people feel trapped by their hate. They just need to be shown a way out."

Iruka couldn't know it at the time, but those simple words would lead Naruto on to rock the shinobi world.

 _A/N: Hello again! So much for this chapter being mostly from Naruto's perspective, Iruka stormed in and demanded some quality screen time before it was too late and he became relegated to "side character" and I decided to indulge him. I really struggled with this one; I have a hard time writing fight scenes but I didn't want to skimp on this. I felt it was important to show how different this Naruto fights compared to canon, and I wanted to experiment with something that didn't have such high stakes as what's coming next._

 _It looks like chapters are settling down in the 7-9k words range; I'll probably try to stick around that because at least so far I can somewhat reliably hit that on a weekly basis. I don't want to go so far as to say that I'm promising a chapter of that size every week, but my goal is to publish every Saturday evening for as long as I can keep it up. Sorry for the rough nature of this chapter, I'm going to throw it past Grammarly to catch the worst offenders but I'm already really late on delivering this and I don't want to stay up all hours of the night editing. (Ce la vie, yes? It's been a bit of a crazy week.) Actually, speaking of that, there are really good odds that I'm going to miss next week unless some magic time opens up in my schedule. I have two choral performances and a LARP event next weekend, so my usual Friday night draft/Saturday afternoon editing pass are both shot. (Speaking of editing: So, uh, the android app version of doc manager ate all my italics, bold, etc in Chapter 2. I restored some of it, but I noticed on re-reading that I missed a bunch. When I eventually come back around on another editing pass of these early chapters I'll restore them. It's a little thing, but I want my dynamics, durn it!)_

 _(Side note for those interested in what I change in my edit passes: Apparently, I've internalized a bit too much spelling from Brit-picked HP fics. A good third of my Grammarly edits were switching UK-English spellings into US-English. I, um, also noticed that I use "though" waaaaaaay too much. I'll work on that!)_

 _Thanks to everyone who's favorited, followed, and especially reviewed! I've been frankly floored to get as many hits as I have on this, and it's more than a little encouraging every time I get another email from ff-dot-net about it! I really want to make more time in the future to reply to reviews properly, but for now: thank you all for your support!_

 _Next chapter - Team Formation! The true genin test! Burnt bridges are hard to mend, but Kakashi has always felt teamwork evolves under pressure!_

 _[Edited 02/02/17_

 _Grammar Edit: Corrected tenses, broke up overly long paragraphs and sentences, and shuffled a few words around for comprehensibility. Replaced a bunch of hair-based and other similarly clunky epithets with something better. Usually just the character's name. :P_

 _Content Edit: Fixed a reference to the color of Konohamaru's scarf in Naruto's inner monolog. Doh. Several minor edits, like changing "Hokage Tower" to "Hokage Residence" to help clarify that his office and his house are different places._ _]_


	4. New Hope

{include StandardDisclaimer}

The Shinobi Without Fear

Chapter 4 - New Hope

 _Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope._

Naruto slipped quietly into the classroom a good fifteen minutes early. Iruka had suggested that the other students who had been aware of his failure would be less likely to question his presence if he was there before they were. His sensei had not truly steered him wrong yet, so he'd decided to take that advice. Only a small handful of other students were present, and most of those were either napping or engrossed in their own conversation. He swept his focus around the room, and noticed that Sasuke's usual row was still empty - both the Uchiha and his fans apparently were not the kind to arrive early.

After a brief bit of contemplation, Naruto ghosted over to his friend's usual table and took the spot closest to the door. Sasuke usually took the spot on the window side, so this would leave a gap between them. Close enough to say 'Yep, I'm here.' without getting in his face about it. He wanted to open a dialog, not force the issue seeing as how the latter tactic had always failed so spectacularly. It was yet another piece of advice Naruto had accepted from Iruka in the past few days as they worked to close some of the glaring gaps in his education both social and academic in between attempts at the kage bunshin.

Naruto's introspection was broken by the arrival of Sasuke; he carefully did not advertise his presence and just waited to see what the latter's response would be. There was no reaction at first, Sasuke's attention seeming focused more on his backtrail than what lay in the classroom, but Naruto caught an almost imperceptible hitch in Sasuke's stride when his gaze came forward. His friend made no comment, but slid into his usual spot with no further hesitation. It was a start. Naruto acknowledged the opening with a small nod, but refrained from launching into the conversation he so desperately wanted. He _had_ to let the other boy make the next move; this was the most interaction they'd had without rejection in several years and he knew how fragile the detente remained.

Over the next few minutes the classroom slowly filled up with quiet chatter as the other students filed in. Naruto was growing increasingly nervous at Sasuke's continued silence, wondering if they'd have any chance at reconciliation before team assignments potentially split them apart for the immediate future. His contemplations were broken by the distant shrill noise of Sakura and Ino racing towards the classroom in the throes of another of their inane challenges. A few moments after he first noticed the sound, Sasuke winced off to his side and Naruto could not stop the small smirk that spread on his face. It was impossible to miss how obviously Sasuke ignored most of the fangirls he was saddled with, but it was relatively rare for him to react outwardly. _He must have been hoping that would end, now that we're all ninja._

Sasuke was close enough that he had a very clear image from his senses, something Naruto realized Sasuke must be aware of when his eyebrows started twitching in a peculiar pattern. It took him a few moments to decipher the message, and when he did he nearly burst out laughing. Sasuke was making a silent plea for assistance that most people would assume was probably a spastic twitch given that the girls were now clearly audible in the classroom. Naruto flooded his chakra towards the doorway and began the careful process of infusing the door and the frame with it. Before he could make the connection and seal the entrance, it was ripped open and the two girls tried to enter at once. He grimaced, but then quickly grinned when he realized they were jammed up trying to each be the first in the room. The door and frame were already connected, and cloth was pretty easy to infuse…

A moment later the girls nearly popped into the room, only to stop when their clothes seemed to be glued at once to both each other and to the doorway they were coming through. There was a momentary tiny ripping sound, then both girls froze in place. As they frantically attempted to separate themselves and get clear of the door without tearing their clothes, blushing as the room's attention fell upon them, Naruto refocused on Sasuke. His friend had shifted his head just enough to take in the scene in the doorway, and the corner of Sasuke's lips turned up in his signature smirk. When Sasuke turned his head back to the front of the class, his gaze paused first on Naruto, then on the space on the bench in between them, before it continued on to land back on the empty desk at the front of the room. Naruto's grin grew slightly, and he took the silent invitation to slide over and close up the space the girls most likely had been aiming for.

He noticed Iruka approaching the doorway and quickly released the girls. He withdrew his chakra and dropped the cloud to its usual passive potency before their sensei could pick up on what he'd done. Iruka chivvied the two into their seats, along with a few more stragglers that had been sniggering in the hallway, and a grumbling Sakura dropped onto the bench next to Naruto. Her face turned longingly towards Sasuke, seeming to look right past or even through Naruto without really registering him, but at a cough from the front of the room she snapped her attention to the teacher and resumed the appearance of a model student.

Naruto listened with only half an ear as Iruka launched into his speech about teamwork, balanced squads, their future as Konoha shinobi and the importance of listening to and respecting their new Jounin sensei. Naruto had heard several drafts of the speech in the past few days and could probably have recited it almost as well as Iruka at this point. It wasn't until he caught his own name that he tuned back in, rewinding his memory and playing it back as they'd been taught. It was important on infiltrations to be able to notice everything around them even if their attention was primarily elsewhere and still be able to recall it later.

"Team Seven will be Hyuuga Hinata, Uchiha Sasuke, and Uzumaki Naruto. Your Jounin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi." Iruka spared Naruto a brief knowing look before continuing on to Team Eight, but Naruto had already stopped listening again.

Naruto suppressed the urge to flash a brilliant grin at Sasuke, instead settling for a tight nod. Sasuke's hands tightened where they were laced together in front of his face, but otherwise did not react. It was more than he expected but less than he hoped. He turned instead towards their third teammate, and waved enthusiastically at Hinata-chan until she looked back at him. He blasted _her_ full-force with the grin he had wanted to aim at Sasuke, fueling it with the memory of how she had kept her silence all this time. He was rewarded with a shy smile and a tiny wave, the chakra that was brushing intangibly against her face registering the temperature spike he associated with blushing. _Huh. Well, I guess she's never really gotten much attention herself. We'll have to fix that!_

Naruto turned back to the front of the classroom, and noticed that he was also picking up more heat from Sakura's face. _Her_ expression, however, was nowhere near as pleased. Not a blush, then, that was anger-flush and her chakra, tiny as it was, was rapidly becoming thorny and aggressive. Naruto blanched slightly, and replayed his memory again. Yup. He'd been ignoring Sakura; always a bad idea. He pointed quietly back at Iruka, hoping to stall for a few moments, and almost sighed in relief when she huffed and turned away again. From the way her left temple was pulsing, her fists clenching and unclenching, he wanted nothing to do with being anywhere near her right now. He crossed his hands briefly under the table, hoping no-one noticed the soft 'poof' from the hallway, and hoped his plan would work.

~SWF~

Hinata was desperately trying to calm her racing heart as Iruka dismissed their group for a lunch break, having instructed them all to return in an hour for collection by the Jounin. She had been placed on a team very different from what she had expected, and she had been completely unprepared for the sheer enthusiasm Naruto had displayed towards her. It would be nice to do more than just quietly get along with a few of her classmates; maybe she should see if they wanted to all eat lunch together and start to get to know one another?

Her burgeoning hopes were dashed when Sakura started screeching something to Naruto about not listening to her before, and how he didn't belong on a team with Sasuke-kun and should switch with her. Hinata frowned, team assignments were not like group projects and not something the new genin had any real say in, but then again rationality was often lost around Sasuke for reasons she struggled to understand. Still, she should probably try to intervene before Sakura bashed Naruto over the head again. She started to stand, but before she could complete the action she heard Naruto mutter something unclear. Sakura seemed to take it as an insult, and there was a brief sensation of movement in her vision before Sakura crashed her fist down onto Naruto's head. Instead of the expected cry of pain, however, there was a sudden explosion of chakra-smoke.

Sakura stumbled out of the smoke, sputtering and confused. When it cleared, both Naruto and Sasuke were nowhere to be seen. Hinata quickly glanced around, but it seemed the two boys had gone off somewhere in secret. Probably to discuss their team. Without her.

Hinata held back a small sigh; this was more along the lines of what she had expected. She quietly excused herself from the desk she had been sharing with Shino-san and Kiba-san, the boys she had actually expected to be paired with, and wished them luck with their new teammate. Shino just nodded, and Kiba seemed too distracted with whining back and forth with Akamaru to do more than wave vaguely at her. Some days, it was entirely too easy to understand why Neji-nii-san thought everything was predetermined when the actions of those around them was so easily predictable.

As she settled down in a quiet corner of the academy grounds to eat her lunch, her thoughts wandered back to her missing teammates. It was odd they had both vanished at the same time like that. While she suspected they were off talking somewhere, she also had not ever seen them together since that fateful day in the woods. This, despite the fact that she had occasionally tracked down Naruto outside of the Academy for another surreptitious boost of confidence and motivation. She'd kept up the questionable practice for nearly another year and a half after learning his secret before realizing one day as she had quietly watched him throwing kunai at targets from the very outermost edges of her Byakugan, far beyond his own area of awareness, that the only proper word for what she was doing was 'stalking'. She'd been mortified at the thought, and from then on relegated herself to observing her classmate carefully whenever possible in class instead.

It was very gratifying to observe his progress and mark it against her own; knowing that he too was working hard in a world that refused to acknowledge him helped give her the strength to persevere through her father's strict training and impossible demands.

"Psssst! Hinata-chan!"

She nearly dropped her onigiri in shock when Naruto's whisper cut out of the bushes next to her. Her eyes pulsed in a flash of chakra, and she found him sitting cross-legged in between a few branches. He had a ramen cup balanced on each knee, and another in his left hand with a pair of chopsticks in his right. He waved again, still enthusiastic but restrained enough that the motion did not disturb his hiding spot. She blinked numbly once or twice before her brain managed to reboot. "N-Naruto-kun? What are you doing?"

"Well," he began, only to take a quick slurp of noodle before continuing. "Sorry, gotta eat it while it's hot-ttebayo! But, but I thought since we were teammates now, we should eat lunch together, right?"

"Ah, ah, yes, but...w-why are you in a bush?" She hated that stammer, and she had been working hard to overcome it, but it still struck when she was surprised, confused, embarrassed, or upset. That was, unfortunately, still rather often. Naruto did not say anything, instead he gestured to another part of the yard with his chopsticks while slurping up another mouthful of noodle. She shifted her focus, and saw Sakura stomping off towards one of the benches that lined the nearby walkways. "Ah. Sakura-san is still mad at you?"

"Mm-hmm! She really really wanted to be on Sasuke's team. Ino-chan too, but she gave up faster."

"Ano...how _did_ you get away earlier? That didn't look like a smoke bomb?" She'd been curious about that but had shunted the thought aside in favor of her melancholy. Another bad habit she'd need to erase, but there were many of those according to her clan and it was a very long process to improve any of them.

"Hehehe, you like? I swapped with a clone I had waiting out in the hallway just in case." Naruto paused long enough to rub his head were Sakura had aimed, as though rubbing away a sore spot. "Stings just thinking about it, I almost didn't make it in time. And I guess Sasuke need some space to go brood or something; I lost track of him in the swap and smoke. It's ok. We'll find him later, after Sakura-chan stops being scary!"

Hinata let herself giggle a bit at the thought of Naruto spending the early days of his genin career on the run from the vengeful kunoichi, checking around every corner for a flash of pink hair. The passed the rest of the lunch break in companionable silence, and Hinata found herself feeling rather hopeful about her team dynamic after all. At the very least, it seemed she would be able to get along with at least _one_ of the boys just fine.

~SWF~

Sasuke was not pleased with one Hatake Kakashi. All of the other teams had been picked up promptly after lunch, with the latest of the jounin having been Sarutobi Asuma sidling in nearly fifteen minutes after the others to collect Team 10 with a lazy yawn. He didn't think he'd ever seen a genin give a jounin an earful like Ino had and was grateful once again that at least _his_ team's excitable blond knew the value of silence. He wasn't sure quite when that lesson had sunk in, but he was inestimably grateful for it. It would be hard enough to be on a team with someone who had once been so close without having to deal with his in-your-face personality on full bore at all times.

He let his gaze slide over once again; Naruto was beginning to display the signals he associated with thinning patience and an oncoming prank. On the one hand, that was _hardly_ an appropriate first impression to make on their new sensei. On the other, he was hard-pressed to care given how much of their time had already been wasted. He let his gaze slip to Hinata, who had been sitting in relative silence and stillness since the last of the other students had left. He was similarly relieved that the only kunoichi he would have to deal with on a regular basis would be the one member of their year that did _not_ have some sort of strange obsession with him. The memory of some of the despondent looks that had been cast his way as their bearers had been escorted from the classroom was enough to make him shudder, and he quickly repressed the images. He was remarkably good at that out of sheer necessity.

Naruto shifted again on the bench next to him, and he steeled himself for the coming explosion of motion, having estimated Naruto to be at his outer limit of patience. Instead, the other boy stilled himself again and briefly sighed before turning to face him, expression unreadable.

"Ne, Sasuke...can we talk? I...I have a few things I want to say if we're gonna be working together."

His first reaction is to refuse. He's heard everything the effervescent pre-teen has had to say over the past few years, and none of it has been enough to make up for what happened _that day_. But, then, he does have to admit curiosity as to how the other boy managed to pass after having obviously failed. He ignored the brief flash of guilt that clenched at his gut, just as he had countless times over the past few years. His duty to his clan far outweighed his debt to Naruto, and his former friend had been the first to betray their promises anyways. Still, if only out of pragmatism...he nodded. That was the best he'd give him for now.

"I, uh. I need to." Naruto paused and swallowed, but as Sasuke's brow started to furrow in frustration Naruto pushed onwards. "I want to apologize. For that day in the Hospital. After, you know. I, I was confused, and scared, and I said the wrong things when what you needed was someone to be on your side completely."

Sasuke felt rage envelop him. _Three years?!_ He's waited _three years_ for _this?_ He opened his mouth, intending to tell him they were done here, but Naruto hurried to finish before he could.

"I… _'saw'_ something that day, Sasuke. Something that might be important, something that confused me, confuses me still. I, I'll tell you everything, if you want to hear it, but _only if_. Otherwise, I'll never bring it up again, and we'll do it your way. That's what I _should_ have said that day, and I'm sorry I didn't. I-I wasn't sure if I was going to say anything, but if we're going to be on a team together...I wanted to know, can we at least start over?"

Sasuke's mind reeled. This was _not_ what he had expected; he had been ready for a fumbled explanation of Naruto's failure-turned-success, or yet another litany of reasons why they should start training together again. Another tirade about how Naruto was keeping up, how he wouldn't drag Sasuke down, please, please, just can we talk. Not, _this_. Whatever this was. He'd always thought that Naruto had thrown away their friendship in terror, that he'd been betrayed a second time so soon after the first. These were _not_ the words of a traitor or coward. But then…

"Why didn't you ever come back? I-I know I yelled at you, but I was...I couldn't handle... _why didn't you ever come back? I never saw you until they made me come back here._ " His voice was a hiss of barely-held-together control, and he wasn't sure what would come out if he slipped. It could have been a scream of rage. It could have been a sob. Finding out would mean letting go; instead, he gripped his emotions more firmly and waited.

"I, what? I _tried_ , Sasuke! That nurse, the one that dragged me out of the room, she-she blacklisted me! I'm not allowed to visit you in the hospital, then or now as far as I know. And no-one would tell me when they let you out, and I had no idea where you would go when you did, so I had to just wait, and wait, and then you came back here but you were acting like I didn't exist anymore. I thought - it doesn't matter. I should have found a way. I'm sorry, Sasuke."

Naruto's face was tight with something Sasuke couldn't define, not with the hot lance of guilt currently rammed through his stomach. All this time, he'd thought that the one person he should have had left had just been another betrayer. He'd lumped his best friend in with _that man_ without ever really questioning if he truly deserved the association. Before he could completely get lost in those thoughts, Naruto elbowed him softly in the ribs in an all-too-familiar fashion.

In a louder voice than what he'd used for the brief conversation, Naruto spoke up again. "Someone's coming. I think it's our new sensei."

Sasuke took a single cleansing breath and cleared his emotions as best he could. It was time to focus. Whoever this Hatake Kakashi was, he needed to learn everything he could if he was ever going to achieve his goal. Hinata moved to come sit by them before their sensei could arrive, and Sasuke quickly muttered out of the side of his mouth. "We'll talk later."

Naruto nodded tightly, and beckoned for Hinata to hurry up.

~SWF~

Hatake Kakashi was not looking forward to this latest exercise in futility. Coming of age in the middle of a war had colored his entire outlook on life in general and shinobi operations in particular. Of the many things that left him feeling uncomfortable in the current way of doing things, sending children that made Obito look studious and world-savvy outside of the village with a hitai-ite on their person was questionable at best and dangerous to his sanity at worst. That worst being if he was the one responsible for them. To say that he had high standards and low expectations was to understate both; even when two of the children in question come from notable clans and the last was the orphaned son of two of his most precious people.

He steeled himself for the expected disappointment beneath a careful veneer of lazy grace as he slid open the door to the classroom, but instead of the rowdy delinquent, dispassionate genius, and incompetent heiress that word on the street had lead him to expect, he found three quiet genin candidates sitting in a row, all of them wearing expressions of control over flickering emotions that were shifting too rapidly for him to bother identifying. Huh. And yup, there it was, that face just like sensei's that punched him in the gut every time he saw it. "My first impression...I was expecting more noise. Meet me on the roof within five minutes."

A quick shunshin deposited him at the indicated location, where he leaned back against the roof railing and tilted his head back toward the sky. It put the edge of the Monument just on the corner of his vision, and he let the reminder of Minato-sensei's specific features wash over the more recent memory of the man's son until he could see the differences again. _That_ had been harder than he had expected, even if half his face was now covered between the goggles and the headband. Three sets of feet bounded up the staircase; faster than he'd expected in that too. Maybe he really should actually read those Academy profiles, if only to find out how wrong they were this time. It _was_ usually worth a few apology drinks at the bars from the overworked Academy admins responsible for writing them.

With a lazy wave to indicate where he wanted them seated, he brought his head back down from the clouds and regarded each one of them slowly in turn. The Uchiha was the stormiest of the three, as though something had just upset him greatly and he was struggling to get it under control. Probably the fact that despite being hailed as a genius, he was being forced to work on a team like everyone else. The Hyuuga was quailing a bit under his gaze, as though expecting an immediate and harsh evaluation but determined to prove her worth all the same. Naruto was just giddy and had little shame in showing it; unfortunately he'd have to knock that down a bit but hopefully he could do it without destroying him.

"Right then. Let's have some introductions; likes, dislikes, dreams, I'm sure you know the drill by now." Kakashi waited as the three candidates shuffled their gazes around, clearly looking for someone else to go first, and he marked the first point off against each of them. "I suppose I can start, since you've all forgotten how this works. My name is Hatake Kakashi; I have no interest in telling you my likes or dislikes. Dreams for the future, well, I suppose I have a number of hobbies…"

He reveled for a moment at the collective annoyance on their faces before pointing vaguely in Hinata's direction before making a 'go on, then' gesture at her. The girl wiped the expression off her face and assumed a more proper posture, then executed a semi-formal seated bow.

"M-my name is Hyuuga Hinata. I enjoy sweet foods, especially cinnamon rolls, flowers, and making people happy. I dislike shellfish...and…" Hinata paused for a moment and seemed to gather herself up.

"I dislike causing others harm, but recognize it as a necessity of our duties. My hobbies are...people watching and flower pressing. My dream is to become an honorable kunoichi and to bring change to my clan for the better." Hinata bowed again, then turned along with Kakashi and Sasuke to Naruto who was seated in the middle.

"Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo! I like cup ramen, and training, and Ichiraku ramen, and friends, and especially Ichiraku ramen when Iruka-sensei is buying! I dislike the three minutes it takes cup ramen to cook! Hobbies, um, I like to practice my traps?" Naruto paused and snickered for an instant, then glanced towards Sasuke and sobered up. "My dream...I will become the greatest ninja of all time, surpassing all of the Hokage, with my friends by my side-ttebayo!"

Kakashi let out an imitation of a thoughtful hum, and turned towards their final member who was staring at Naruto as though he'd just seen a ghost. The expression was gone an instant later and the Uchiha resolutely resumed staring off into middle distance before speaking in a flat, if wavering, tone.

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I don't have many particular likes, although I have many dislikes. I don't have a dream as much as an ambition; I will restore my clan and…" Sasuke trailed off for a long moment, before taking a small breath and seeming to force himself to finish. "I will see justice visited upon a _certain man_."

Up until that point, Kakashi had only been vaguely listening. Self-introductions were essentially required as the initial step of any team-building process and he had heard enough of them to make his ears bleed. While the particulars were not usually something he bothered paying attention to, let alone predicting, he had been specifically warned of Sasuke's single-minded focus on _killing_ Itachi. It was right there at the top of his profile. 'Last Uchiha, genius but not to the scale of his brother whom he wants to kill, top of his class, etc etc.' Judging by the whipcrack noise made by Naruto's neck as his head snapped over to look directly at Sasuke, the first time he'd made any effort at looking at any of them head-on, it wasn't to _his_ expectations, either.

With a mental shrug, Kakashi shoved it off for some future jounin to deal with and launched into his satisfyingly well-rehearsed spiel regarding the bleak future prospects of themselves and their classmates, their hilariously low odds of _actually_ becoming genin (and oh how he loved getting to deliver the part about them not _genuinely_ being genin until and unless he said so, the outrage got him every time), life is hard and everything is terrible, boo-hoo, now go home and get ready to be up at stupid-o'clock tomorrow. Oh, here's some terrible advice and the instruction papers, see you tomorrow, aaaaand shunshin.

It was almost like he'd done this a few times. Still, they'd been different enough from his expectations that he supposed it might actually be worth his time to read their profiles. It was extraordinarily unlikely that Naruto and Sasuke would manage to repair the broken bridge between them in time to pass his test, few people knew how hard that sort of thing was better than Kakashi himself, but hey, teamwork always evolves best under pressure, right? And if he was wrong about that, well, that would just mean he was off of babysitting duty. He would win either way.

~SWF~

Naruto was desperate to talk to Sasuke after the other boy's last words in his 'introduction', maybe his gamble in his own had paid off, but after listening to Kakashi's instructions he knew there was a more immediate problem to solve. He snapped a practiced amount of chakra into the page before him and started tracing his fingers past the lines written upon it. It contained basic information; directions to the training ground, confirmation of the time they should arrive, basic composition of the test - nothing new or useful, really, besides the place they were to meet. He lifted his head and directed his face to one, then the other, of his teammates. "So, uh, if this test is going to be that hard, I think we should swap some information real quick before we all head home for the day."

"Information?" asked Sasuke blandly, looking up from his own somewhat crumpled instruction sheet. Apparently he'd crushed it at some point, probably to show how determined he was (paper was tough stuff after all) when Naruto hadn't been paying attention.

"Yeah, you know, what are our skills, what are our major weaknesses we might need the others to cover, basic team stuff. If we're supposed to survive against a jounin, even one that's holding back, we'll need more than just our individual strategies."

Sasuke grunted an affirmation, and Hinata nodded pleasantly, so they huddled closer on the rooftop to exchange details. Naruto took a deep breath and forced himself to relax as he let it out. Both of them already knew his secret, even if only in the most general terms for Hinata, so he could do this. If only just.

"OK, so I'll go first?" Naruto waited for Hinata's nod and Sasuke's shrug before continuing. "OK. You both know about my eyes, but Hinata-chan needs the details and Sasuke, I've figured out some new tricks. I'm blind, completely so. No blurry shapes, no light and dark, nada. Instead, I keep up a constant cloud of chakra all around me. It goes out about fifty meters, but if I focus it in a particular direction I can stretch it out to almost a hundred. However, my area awareness drops to about ten meters while I'm doing that, so if I need to look long I need some backup in mid-range. Anything that my chakra touches, I can feel almost like I'm touching it with my hands and build a mental image of what I'm looking at."

Naruto paused at a small 'eep' noise from Hinata and turned his face toward her with a look of concern. He could sense her blushing again, furiously this time if he was any judge, but she quickly started waving her hands in some sort of denial. Sasuke let off a sound that was closer to a snort than a grunt and motioned for him to keep going.

"Oookay? Um. Yeah. So I can see around corners or obstacles, and I'm really good at spotting people that are hidden against just normal vision because I can feel them moving through my chakra cloud. Tight spaces make it really hard to move my chakra through, so I can't usually see past clothes to find hidden weapons or supplies, through closed windows or doors, or underground at all. My other senses are all very acute, so I'm sensitive to loud noises and strong smells. Nothing like an Inuzuka; I don't hear or smell things normal people can't, but I'll hear or smell it sooner than most. Any questions so far?"

He got two short headshakes in response, and so continued. "Umm, that's about it for senses. I think you've probably both seen my taijutsu, I focus on evasion for defense and short flurries for offense. It's not my best skill because all the moving stirs up my chakra and gaps can form in the cloud, so I try to minimize my own movements to keep things under control. Shurikenjutsu is pretty good as long as the targets are in my cloud. No bukijutsu yet. My ninjutsu, well. I can do kawarimi, but it turns out my bunshin and henge are all wrong and I can probably never fix them. It's, uh, why I failed at first."

At their confused looks, he grinned sheepishly and snapped off both jutsu. A small horde of monotone Narutos surrounded them, while the original became a monotone Iruka. He held both for a few moments, long enough for his teammates to examine both with a mix of bemusement and disgust, then released them all together. A set of crossed fingers later he performed a quick kage bunshin, creating three clones to stand behind him.

"On the plus side, I learned how to make these guys. They're shadow clones, solid copies with their own share of my chakra. They can scout, perform jutsu of their own, even extend my chakra cloud. Their individual clouds are smaller though, only about 10 meters with a 25 meter focus spike." Two of the clones proffered themselves for a brief inspection, and all three released after a brief round of poking and prodding. "One good hit and they're out, so they're best for scouting and ambush tactics."

"Oh, and I can do some decent traps. I've caught a few genin and chunin in the prank ones, but I don't think I've ever gotten a jounin with them so they're probably only good as distractions at best tomorrow. I'm best at mid range for now, but I'm hoping to work on my close range with both of you once we start training. OH! Super-important~ttebayo! I have to be extremely careful about reading. I do it by putting chakra into the paper and feeling how the paper and ink are different, so I guess I can accidentally set off seals or explosive tags just by, uh, looking at them? So I'll need help there."

To Naruto's surprise, it was Sasuke who volunteered to go next by way of speaking first. "I'm good with shurikenjutsu, and I can do some basic fire jutsu as well as the Goukakyuu no Jutsu. I can do a few trap tricks with ninja wire and cord, but mine are intended to be supplemental to close-range tactics, herding the enemy into range rather than doing any direct damage. I don't have any long-range capability besides thrown kunai, and my Sharingan has not yet awoken so I have no special perceptive abilities. My strongest area is taijutsu. I am...not very practiced at coordinating my abilities with others; I'll do better if you two can support me rather than the other way around."

Naruto was stricken dumb. Sasuke, speaking at length about his own abilities, and more so, admitting he had areas of weakness? He must have shaken his friend up more than he thought, or maybe Sasuke really had just been waiting for Naruto to prove himself?

"A-ano, I am also strongest with taijutsu, but I have a very hard time actually using it in practice. My clan's style, the Juken, is extremely damaging unless either absolute precision is used or we only use the physical strikes, not their chakra extensions." Hinata blushed again and looked away from them both before she resumed speaking. " I, um, I really don't like hurting other people, so I find it difficult to use effectively. However, I have a very solid defense and can help provide cover in close range. I have basic shurikenjutsu, and can use them at longer than normal range thanks to the Byakugan, but I have no ninjutsu beyond those taught here. I am best at close range in combat, or at long range as a scout or tracker."

Naruto grinned. This was more than he had expected by far when he made his suggestion. He took a moment to fall still and try to judge the current time by the feel of the sun on his skin, but eventually gave in and cast his chakra around the side of the academy until he found an open window and checked one of the wall clocks. Thankfully it was one of the older ones, without the glass front, so he was able to check it without having to waste time infusing the whole thing with chakra to feel it from the inside. It was getting late now, and with the early start they were going to have to get…"OK, I think that's probably all we need for now? We don't want to be too tired tomorrow, so we should probably all call it a day and head home to pack and get ready."

The others agreed, and the three shot off into the growing shadows of the early evening.

~SWF~

The next day found a bleary Naruto dragging his feet onto training ground seven a few minutes before five. He collapsed onto the ground between Sasuke, who was leaning against a tree, and Hinata who was standing by the three training posts that stood out on the near end of the field. The three exchanged half-hearted greetings, and Naruto briefly attempted to stir up another conversation about tactics and planning, but Hinata pointed out that they wouldn't know what they really needed to plan for until Kakashi arrived. The conversation, which he had only really started in order to kill the last few minutes until their sensei arrived, quickly petered out.

Thirty long minutes later, there was still no sign of the man. Naruto's patience was wearing thin, and the others did not look much happier. "Dammit, where the hell is he?!"

"Ah, well, he _was_ nearly two hours late meeting us yesterday…" Hinata offered tentatively.

Naruto turned towards Sasuke, and they exchanged a long look. Naruto shrugged and pulled his pack around in front of him to start digging through it. "If he's anywhere near as late as he was yesterday, then we still have at least an hour to kill. I'd say we could spar to get used to how we fight, but we should probably pace ourselves. And I don't know about you two, but I am _starving_. And, I mean, it's not much, but I do have some cup ramen…?"

"A-Ano, sensei said we shouldn't eat…"

"Yeah, but ramen goes down fast, it'll probably be all out of our stomachs by the time he gets here. And if not, well, I think I'd rather puke ramen than just dry-heave."

There were a few moments of silence, but then Sasuke pushed off the tree and wandered into the woods. A few minutes later he strolled back in and made a small pile of sticks on the dirt near the posts. A quick katon jutsu had them lit, which seemed to be as much of an answer as he was going to give that early in the day, and he plopped down cross-legged near the fire to feed it more sticks as it grew. Naruto grinned at him reflexively as he pulled a collapsible camp pot out of his back and started to stand. Hinata gently intercepted him, shyly taking the pot and pushing him back down.

"I'll get the water since you brought the food and Sasuke started the fire."

They shared a quiet time as the water boiled and the ramen steeped, both of his teammates making a few appreciative noises at having food in them as they ate. Soon everything had been cleaned up and set to right, but there was _still_ no sign of Hatake. Naruto finally snapped, and looked up from repacking his pot with a grin that set both of the others on edge.

"OK, he said survival test, right? And he's a _jounin_ , so no matter what kind of test, it's going to be super-hard, right?" Naruto waited for their nods, which he noted with satisfaction were a bit nervous, and grinned all the more. "Well, if he's going to give us all this time to prepare...I say we prank his ass to Iwa and back."

Sasuke let out a scoff, his tension vanishing as soon as the word 'prank' escaped Naruto's mouth. "Pranks on a jounin, great idea. Let's just quit now and save ourselves the embarrassment."

"Um, well, maybe…" Hinata started to pipe up, only to falter when Sasuke turned his dissatisfied gaze on her instead. She folded in on herself for a moment, until there was a sharp 'pop' noise and she looked up to see one of the used ramen cups fall away from Sasuke's face. Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle the giggle that wanted to erupt; Sasuke looked furious now but it was all aimed at Naruto and it gave her the breathing room to try again. "You know, the only difference between a prank and a trap is whether or not the goal is to hurt the victim…"

Sasuke stopped with his fist cocked back over Naruto's head, the latter having raised a feeble guard despite being nearly doubled over cackling, and this time his gaze was more considering when he looked at Hinata. "Hn. You have a point. Well, ramen-boy, you're the prank expert. What did you have in mind?"

When Naruto regained his breath, he flashed a grateful smile at Hinata before standing up and brushing the dust off the seat of his pants. His hands flashed together into his favorite hand-sign, and in a puff of smoke eighteen clones popped into existence. They quickly fanned out, two moving to flank each of the candidates and the original, with the last twelve grouping into sets of three.

"OK, each of us gets two of me for extra hands and lookouts. Remember, these guys have short cloud range, so pay attention to what's around you and don't leave them to do all the watching. The extras will spread out and try to cover as much area as they can to watch for Kakashi-sensei. As soon as one of them 'spots' him, they'll pop, which will alert me and all the other clones so we can rush back here to the meeting spot. Clones'll finish up any trap that gets interrupted from being done, just make sure you get back here as fast as possible so we don't give away what we're doing."

Nineteen heads nodded in response, and the group scattered into the woods with their supplies.

~SWF~

Several hours of productive trap-making passed before one of the clones finally spotted Kakashi over by some big fancy stone set back beyond the training posts. The clone cast his focus around for a moment, and found nothing in range besides two other lookouts. With a shrug, he pulled a kunai and jabbed himself in the leg. Not a pleasant way to dispel, but doing it the painless way let off a pulse of chakra and he didn't want to let the jounin notice if he could help it. The things they did for the Boss.

~SWF~

The three candidates met up scant seconds later, panting slightly from the sprint. They had started from the outer edges of the ground and worked their way in; the entire place was a virtual death trap. Or it would be, if most of the kunai and other sharp bits hadn't been either blunted training weapons or quick, shoddy wooden carvings dipped in muddy water to hide the color. Still, it should give them _something_ to work with if (when) Kakashi managed to split them up.

When nothing happened after a few minutes, the other two looked at Naruto, with Sasuke the first to recover his breath and pipe up. "I thought your clone said he was nearby?"

"He is! Well, he was at least? He was back there somewhere." Naruto defended, pointing vaguely past the posts. Sasuke and Hinata both stared in the indicated direction, searching closely. When they seemed to have no success, he gestured for them to follow and lead them a little way closer to the stone. Still in a bit of tree cover, he stopped the others and pointed again. This time his voice was a furtive whisper. " _Look_ , there, just in front of that funny stone. He's just standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring at it. That's where he was when the clone spotted him, too."

The others stared at him for a long moment, before they looked back over skeptically. Both let out small breaths when they finally managed to spot him, their eyes having slid right over him each time until Naruto had pointed to the exact spot. They turned almost as one to stare at him instead, and Naruto fidgeted a bit under the intense scrutiny. "I dunno why you couldn't see him before, but remember, I 'see' different. He's really hard to spot, but even jounin have to breathe, and every now and then his jaw shifts like he's talking."

Their scrutiny increased, if anything, and Naruto quickly found himself feeling uncomfortable. With a shrug, he jumped out of the bushes and bellowed the first thing that came to mind. "You're late, sensei!"

Naruto would later reflect on two things in particular that he learned in that moment. First, jounin can throw kunai _really_ fast. Like "Holy crap, thank you for pulling me out of the way of that Sasuke!" fast.

And secondly, jounin can jump really, _really_ high.

 _A/N: Well hello there! I'm sorry this chapter is coming out late, this week ended up being a lot busier than I anticipated two weeks ago and I barely managed to get as much written as I did in between edits of the first three chapters. Once again this one will be going up with just a basic editing pass for grammar and spelling; I'll do another sweep for any content issues or other less glaring mistakes when I can. (For those of you who haven't read them since they were first posted, all three chapters have seen some revisions. Editing notes appear at the bottom of each chapter when I repost, for those who are curious or just want a quick summary of what I changed without re-reading the whole thing.) Also, my apologies for not getting to the actual test itself; it's nearly one AM as I type this and I've got to get some sleep before I work tomorrow._

 _Next weekend is looking to be another busy one, so I'll try to spend more time writing during the week so that I don't leave you all waiting longer than I absolutely have to, because holy heck there are a lot of you reading this now. I continue to be utterly thrilled by all the views, favs, follows, and especially reviews! I'll also try and make time to respond to those reviews that included either actionable feedback or questions this week. Thank you all so much for your interest and support!_

 _In particular, I'd like to address one thing in case it wasn't clear from the writing - this Sasuke is both more and less messed up than canon Sasuke was at the same point in time. This one had a friend outside of the clan, which means he already had an attachment that survived past his clan's slaughter, but he also lost that friend (through mutual stupidity, kids make bad life choices, what're ya gonna do) for a long time. However, unlike canon Naruto who had to shove the idea of friendship down Sasuke's throat with a well-placed Rasengan, this one just needs to reconnect and they've already started that process. I do have a plan for how this changes things, and I hope you'll enjoy how things play out differently as a result._

 _Next time should finish the genin test, and we'll spend some time exploring how this team trains differently from canon T7 for a chapter or three before we move on to the C-Rank From Hell ™._

 _Also, I'm sorry that I'm not sorry about the unrepentant star wars joke in the chapter title. I realized that the start of the "hope" sequence was chapter four and I couldn't help myself._

 _Until next time, friends!_

 _~Pebkac42_


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